They Shall Not Break
by Dracoisalooker76
Summary: "They have each other and their love and, according to legend, that's always enough." Continuation of Do Not Go Gentle. Modern Day AU. Everlark
1. Part I

_Hi, everyone! The response was so wonderful for _Do Not Go Gentle_. I am so grateful for every review and every follow, rec, or favorite. You guys are the best. I know I said that I wouldn't be writing a sequel and, I suppose it's kind of bending the definition, but I don't count this as a sequel. I see _Do Not Go Gentle_ as complete and does not need to have anything after it, however the response was so wonderful and I had so many dedicated readers ask for more, even weeks after the last chapter was updated, that I couldn't say no. So, this is a continuation for you guys. It doesn't need to be read as a sequel. _

_Since _Do Not Go Gentle_ paralleled the three books (three parts for three books), I guess this would technically be the unwritten pages between the last chapter of _Mockingjay_ and the epilogue, where Katniss and Peeta grow back together. So, I feel like I'm writing a fanfic of my own fic, as weird as that sounds. So, I guess you could think about this as a post-_Mockingjay_ parallel._

_This will also be split into parts, just like _Do Not Go Gentle_. Again, I struggled as to whether I should split them into chapters or just give them to you whole. I decided it flowed better whole. The parts will be around the same length those in _Do Not Go Gentle_, but there will be five parts instead of three, which will loosely follow the five milestones of adulthood - c__ompleting school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying, and starting a family. Since I'm at school, the updating will not be as frequent as it was when I was writing _Do Not Go Gentle_, but I hope to be as frequent as possible._

_Enjoy! This is for you guys._

_Disclaimer: I own nothing._

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**They Shall Not Break**

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Part I

_Here we are, now you're in my arms_

_I never wanted anything so bad_

_Here we are, for a brand new start_

_Living the life that we could've had_

-Skillet, _Lucy_

There's a tradition we do in Miner Falls. It's called a toasting. When two people get married, the reception is held at their home. Those invited – which, let's be honest, ends up being the entire town – bring various items to congratulate the couple. Practical gifts, like glassware or quilts, or food items for the potluck with a recipe guide for the couple to put in their books are the typical fares. Then, after the cake and some dancing and right before the first of the crowd head home for the night, the couple takes a loaf of bread and toasts it in the fire. They feed each other. I suppose it dates back generations.

It signifies that the couple can sustain on each other. They don't need any outside influence. They have each other and their love and, according to legend, that's always enough.

In today's modern capitalist society, our tradition is more fantasy than anything else.

Rye's fiancée, or wife now I suppose, thought the tradition was _darling_. Her mother thought it was _quaint_. Her father looked at us all like we were uncivilized, as did the majority of her fancily dressed out-of-state guests, including her snotty sister Glimmer. Primrose Everdeen, on the other hand, thought it was the most romantic thing she's ever seen and, when Rye and Lux fed each other she just about died.

Prim tugs on her sister's arm as Leaven shoots a cork out of a champagne bottle, my mother hissing behind him all the while. "Will you and Peeta do a toasting, please? It's so beautiful."

Katniss blushes and it's so dark her face turns purple. In order to save her, I walk around and grab Prim by the waist, lifting up the fifteen-year-old and swinging her around. "Planning our wedding already?" I joke while she giggles.

I set Prim back on the ground and she goes over to hug Katniss, telling her she was only kidding, but Katniss now looks thoroughly uncomfortable with her arms crossed over her body and her foot tapping the ground. It's not that Katniss doesn't love me. I know it's not that. It's that she never imagined being married. She never wanted it. And, on top of that, Katniss doesn't plan for anything. It goes against her views. After surviving a fierce battle for her life, a battle that can rage suddenly and without warning, talk about the future makes her uneasy. She knows more than anyone that plans can change at the drop of a hat.

When Prim is whisked away by Rye, I walk up to Katniss and bring her close to me. She rests her head on my chest and my chin falls on her hair.

"You okay?" I ask.

She shrugs and adjusts the glasses on her face. Due to the total body irradiation she received prior to her stem cell transplant, she developed cataracts in both of her eyes. She just had surgery to remove the second cataract two weeks ago and her eyes are still healing. She absolutely hates wearing glasses and is hoping that it won't be a permanent feature. Her ophthalmologist, who specializes in cancer patients with drug-induced eye problems, is keeping her hopes cautiously high that she'll only need them for activities such as reading.

For the past few weeks, Haymitch hasn't let her do much of anything. He's even waited on her hand and foot, thinking that if he doesn't let her move she won't do anything to her healing eyes to cause any complications. Today's the first day in weeks he's let her out of the house except to go to her appointments and I can tell she's exhausted.

I find a seat against the wall and fall into it, bringing her with me. She curls into me, taking a much-needed load off her feet. Although she's no longer battling leukemia, there are daily reminders of her fight. Despite her physical therapy appointments with Finnick Odair, and the fact that she can run freely most days, there are moments when the nerves in her legs decide to malfunction. She developed chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, which can leave her feet numb or cause fiery pains to shoot through her. That's rare though. Mostly it's in her physical appearance. Her hands will be scarred forever due to the graft-versus-host disease that took over her body after she received the stem cell transplant that put her into remission. The radiation to her lower abdomen and pelvis left her with digestive problems, so she has a nutritionist to ensure she gets the nutrients she needs and a dietician who works to keep her from becoming underweight. It takes more effort for her to learn something than it does for others, but her tutor Annie has worked with her tirelessly to ensure she's ready for college in September, the first time she'll be in a school setting since kindergarten.

But she's strong. Nothing impresses me more than the fact that, despite everything she's been through, she can smile. And, let me tell you, it's a beautiful smile.

While Katniss rests, I scan the room. There is such a clear divide between those from Miner Falls and those who came to see the bride. My mother, who I see cozying up to our new in-laws, couldn't be more thrilled with Rye's choice of spouse. I can see why he gave me Grandmother's pearl engagement ring. Although – having met Lux before – I know she would have loved the charm, her family would not have. Considering Glimmer's maid-of-honor dress cost upwards of a thousand dollars and the fancy plantation where the engagement party was held featured in _The Notebook_, I can only imagine what her parents would say to an old pearl engagement ring.

Not that I'm complaining. I look down at Katniss's hand and trace the pearl with my thumb. I like being able to see Katniss wear it, more of a promise ring for us than the engagement ring our grandmother expected it to be when she left it to Rye in her will.

My father sits with a few of the Miner Falls guys at a table, all of them tugging at the ties around their necks. Mr. Cartwright and my dad, who I don't think I've ever seen dress formally for anything, look completely out of place. My father couldn't care less about fancy parties and social functions. My mother, on the other hand, is thriving in this new development. Bonus points to Rye, the son who was already far and away her favorite, for picking a girl of status. He's got the degree and he's secured himself with a major corporation after an internship with the company's vice president his junior and senior years. They're even paying for his MBA.

Leaven and I, we've got a lot of catching up to do. Although, I think I'm pretty much sunk in my mother's eyes. I heard her earlier tonight telling Lux's mother about my schooling. She hates that I go to State anyway, so for her to have someone to complain about it with, since my father doesn't care and most people in Miner Falls live and breathe for State football, is like a godsend.

"What are you thinking?"

I look back down to see that Katniss has lifted her head off my chest and is staring at me as I let my mind wander. She looks up at me through her glasses and any thoughts of my mother fly right out of my head. I lean down to kiss her forehead and grin.

"You're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen," I say.

Katniss is terrible with taking compliments. She ducks her head a little, blushing fiercely, but her lips creep upward. "I'm not supposed to upstage the bride," she says.

I shrug and tighten my arms around her, pressing her toward me. Lux is beautiful. She's blonde, with the brightest green eyes and a nice smile, and I can see why Rye is attracted to her, but Katniss's beauty is both inside and out. Her perseverance is just as wonderful as her appearance.

I'm hopeless and it's a lost cause. I've fallen into Katniss Everdeen's trap and have no desire to ever crawl out.

Rye and Lux's living room, which is about the size of our house in Miner Falls, has been organized so there can be a food station and room to mingle. The door to the deck and yard is open. There had been a dance floor out there earlier, but now that the sun is beginning to go down and the late summer's night breeze is beginning to set in most of the guests have come inside. I can see Hersh on the deck with Prim, both of them sitting on the railing with sodas and Prim animatedly telling him something, her arms flailing wildly. Delly's out with them and she catches my eye through the open door. When her eyes flicker to Katniss, whose head is back resting on my chest, she smiles.

"Hey," Rye says softly in my ear, coming over to rest his hands on my shoulders. He stands behind the chair and looks down at Katniss before ruffling my hair. "You can head out whenever, you know. The important stuff's done."

I nod, realizing Rye is whispering because Katniss is asleep, despite the loud sounds of the room. It is a long drive over state lines to get Prim and Katniss home and then another forty-five minutes back to Miner Falls. Leaven is staying the night with his girlfriend, who lives closer to Rye and Lux than we do, and our parents have taken the luxury of renting a hotel room. I'm the only one heading out for the long journey home.

It's weird to think of home without Rye, even though he hasn't lived there for a year and, for the previous four years he was only home in the summer. It's even weirder to acknowledge that my brother is married. Even though I knew it was coming – even before they announced their engagement it was obvious Rye would marry Lux, his girlfriend all through college – I just can't stop thinking of him as my older brother, the same one that punched Slate Colliery for spreading a rumor about Leaven and then told me that he was the _only one who could shit on us_. But, I suppose, everyone grows up and moves on.

Lux comes over just as I'm lifting Katniss up, Rye heading out to grab Prim, and she kisses my cheek.

"Congratulations," I say. "It was beautiful."

The wedding was beautiful. Since they wanted to keep the Miner Falls reception and toasting tradition, her parents had insisted on the venue. Therefore, Rye and Lux had gotten married in an outdoor ceremony at the Roanoke Country Club, the backdrop being the Blue Ridge Mountains, in a scene that was absolutely breathtaking. I had never seen anything like it. The chairs were draped in lush fabrics and there were flowers everywhere, but the coordinator obviously knew what they were doing because nothing took away from the bride, the groom, and the mountain views.

She smiles. "Thank you so much for being here and bringing Prim and Katniss," she says, her eyes falling briefly to the girl in my arms. "They're wonderful and it meant so much to Rye."

I nod and she pats my cheek again before lifting the gigantic skirt of her wedding dress and going to another couple that looks like they're getting ready to leave. I had originally been nervous about bringing Katniss and Prim to the wedding. Everyone from Miner Falls knows about them now. Just about everyone knows the story of how Katniss and I got together, how I became all but infatuated with her, and that Prim is sort of part of the package. Lux's guests, though, would have no idea and I worried about their reactions. I worried for weeks about them judging Katniss if something went wrong, if she couldn't walk that day or if they would balk at the special dinner she would need to eat for her dietary restrictions.

But Rye had wanted them there. He and Lux had even sent them their own invitations. I had been surprised at how well Rye took to Katniss and Prim. He and my father took to Prim like the girl our parents never had. As soon as Prim gets her license, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if my father offered her a job at the bakery and Rye, who always had a terrible case of older brother syndrome, clicked with her immediately. As for Katniss, my father liked her the first time I introduced them before Katniss relapsed. Rye said he liked her because she made me happy.

Leaven and my mother, on the other hand, didn't take to them as quickly. Leaven liked Prim enough. He could have suitable conversations with her, but he shied away from Katniss, especially before he met her. He would avoid Rye and I when we would talk about her when she was ill, finding excuses to leave the room so he didn't have to talk about her uncertain future. All of their meetings so far have been awkward with Leaven only sticking to safe topics like the weather and he's blatantly obvious in that he's trying not to talk about her illness.

My mother is the worst. She hates Katniss, stemming from her need to blame someone for my decision to go to State and not some fancy private college, and she ignores Prim, mostly because I think she sees her as the daughter she never had and always wanted. Of course, my mother and I have been rocky for years. We go weeks without talking to each other, even when we're in the same house. I still can't get over the last thing she said ("Peeta, she's a ticking time bomb! Why can't you find someone who won't die on you?") and I cannot wait to go back to school.

But Rye wanted them here so I brought them and no one really noticed anything different. My worries had all been for nothing. It took a weight off my shoulders.

My father stands when he sees us and I can hear Prim's shoes clicking behind me. He ruffles my hair and kisses my head, as if he's never going to see me again, before patting my shoulder. "Drive safe."

"I'll text you when I get home."

He says goodbye to Prim and then the three of us head out of the house. I have Prim open the door to the truck and she slides in to take the middle seat before I place Katniss next to her. Prim gets her settled while I walk around to the driver's side.

"Lux seems nice," Prim says as she fiddles with the radio. "I like her."

I smile and eye Katniss stirring while I merge onto the highway, leaving Roanoke on our way out of Virginia. It will take us over three hours to get back and I fully expect us stopping more than once. However, the truck is in better condition than mine. Haymitch let me drive his, not trusting my old Ford to make the journey and not wanting us to get stuck halfway home.

"_What_ are we listening to?" Katniss whines groggily, moving her hand to rub her eyes under her glasses.

Prim giggles and turns up the volume of her favorite pop radio station, humming along before going full out with her off-key rendition. I laugh and add in, our voices blending in a horrible cacophony. Katniss reaches for her ears.

"Sing for us, Katniss," Prim says.

She shakes her head. "Not to this."

I let out a laugh and change lanes. I've never heard Katniss sing, but I have heard her hum. The first time I saw her she was humming with the birds and it was, to this day, one of the most memorable parts of that meeting. But, she doesn't sing, hasn't in years, and I don't push her, even though Prim tells me that she's amazing.

The bridge of the song hits and, to get Prim off her tail, I burst out the lyrics. "_Hot night, wind was blowing. Where you think you're going, baby?_"

Prim explodes in a fit of giggles and, out of the corner of my eye, I can see Katniss staring at me incredulously. "You are so bad," she deadpans.

"Well, we have three hours of fun ahead of us," I joke. "Hopefully your ears don't bleed before then."

"Haymitch will kill you if you bring me home broken."

Prim can hardly contain herself as we merge onto I-81 S toward Salem. She's lost to a fit of laughter that transfers to Katniss and before long the two are overpowering the radio. Prim's giggles are definitely contagious and I find myself smirking. Most of the time, a three-hour car ride is a terrible experience. With these girls, three hours will go by in a snap.

* * *

There's something about leaving. I don't know if anyone else feels this way – maybe it's just me – but the world is always calm when we leave home. As the last of Hersh's boxes get piled in the back of my truck, I can't help but notice the swaying of the trees in the wind. The leaves are almost dancing against the clear blue sky. The gravel roads lift up dirt and crinkle under the weight of our shoes.

I wonder if I was leaving home for some other reason, like when we were five and Katniss left Miner Falls for a fancy children's hospital in the state capitol, if the world would be just as calm. A calm before the storm instead of the turbulent weather always depicted in films and literature.

"Don't do anything stupid."

I turn to Delly standing beside me, her arms crossed over her body in stern warning but the grin across her face giving away her tease. I throw my arm around her shoulder and laugh. "When have we ever done anything stupid?" I ask, knowing that if anyone has enough ammunition to fight that question, it's Delly Cartwright.

Delly rolls her eyes and looks to where Mrs. Donner keeps her death grip on Hersh, our best friend trying to get away. When I follow her gaze, she laughs.

"I just feel bad for your RA," she says. "The two of you in the same dorm."

People always say not to go to college with your best friends. College is the time to branch out, meet new people, and start a new journey. My mother always tells me I never do anything right, so naturally I wouldn't follow this advice either. Most of the kids at my high school that go to college end up at the same places – the state university, a community college, and a select few end up leaving for good like Rye and Leaven. Delly went off to a school that excels in education. When Hersh and I found out we were both going to State, we vowed to go our own ways.

Obviously, that didn't happen.

It only took a few weeks before our groups started to intersect. Hersh and I had a class together. I had class with his roommate. He was on my friend's intramural soccer team. We had the same free time to get lunch. Slowly the group of friends he had made in the first few weeks started to eat dinner with the guys I hung around with in my dorm. By December, our group of guys was solidified.

Hersh finally gets away and comes up to Delly, lifting her in air. "Don't go crazy, Del," he says, setting her down and patting the top of her head.

Delly rolls her eyes. "I could say the same for you."

He puts his hand over his heart. "I'm wounded."

Before the two of them can get into one of their bantering tournaments, I step forward and hit the back of my truck, like in old movies when the man hits the car he puts his girl into as she drives away. Only, it's the opposite for me. "Come on, Hersh. Let's go."

He rolls his eyes and nudges my side. "A week without Katniss too much for you?"

Delly giggles as I glare before going to hug her. "I'll see you soon," I say, kissing her cheek. She shakes her head and hits my shoulder.

"Go on, don't keep her waiting," she tells me with a wink. "And get him all settled. Lord knows he needs guidance."

Hersh laughs. He's standing in the truck's doorway, his feet on the floor, his arms holding the hood. "Yeah, come on, Mama 'Lark! I got to get settled."

"Hold your horses," I shout, but I'm running to the driver's side. I slide in and Hersh falls into his seat, reminiscent of so many times before when we've done the same. Delly hits the back of the truck like I did before and the two of us take off down the road.

When we get off our exit, we follow a line of vans and trucks all full of college supplies. Campus is crowded with all the upperclassmen moving in today. Katniss is already on campus, having arrived with the other freshmen on Monday for a few days of orientation. We sit in a line while the traffic piles into the parking lots surrounding the sophomore dorms.

Hersh groans and taps his fingers on the outside of the car to the radio. "With a school this size, they should have about eight move-in days," he whines, pulling his sunglasses off his eyes. He squints and points out the window. "Spot."

I pull in where Hersh is pointing and he jumps out of the truck, taking claim to the left side of the room. He grabs the lightest box he can and all but sprints inside. I roll my eyes and look up at the building that will be my home for the next nine months. It is certainly a step up from freshman year.

Taking out a box, I turn my head down the hill to where the freshmen dorms are located. The dorms are separated into housing districts that the resident assistants patrol and the lower the number, the lower the grade. Each district has three buildings assembled like row houses in that they are all connected. Freshmen housing is in districts ten, eleven, and twelve. I know Katniss's dorm, Lime, is in district twelve. It's the district I was in last year, only I was in Coal. Slate, Hersh's freshman dorm, rounds out the twelfth housing district.

I set the box down and pull my phone out of my pocket.

Scrolling through, I find my last text from Katniss and hit reply.

_Here. I'll come find you when I'm done moving in._

I hit send and grab a box.

This year, Hersh and I have moved up in the world. Instead of the tiny two person rooms with the common floor bathrooms freshmen get, sophomores living in districts seven, eight, and nine live in four-mans with the basics – bathroom and fridge. Next year, juniors get full kitchens tacked on and, by the time you're in district one, two, or three as a senior, it's like you're living in your very own apartment of college luxury. Hersh and I, and our two roommates, have a decent room in district seven's Poplar dorm. It has a nice little common area with a couch.

There are a bunch of boxes everywhere when I walk in the room. One of our roommates, Dalton, brought a television. The box is on the ground next to the outlet along with enough gaming systems to stock a small army. I sneak a peek in one of the bedrooms and see Dalton's stuff all set up on one side, the other completely bare. Then I head in to see Hersh lying on his half-made bed on the right side of the room.

"I thought you wanted left?" I tease, dropping my box on the desk.

He lifts his head and grabs the comforter off the floor, draping it over himself. "I think this bed is more comfortable," he says.

I shake my head and fight a laugh. "Come on, we have to get the stuff out of my truck so I can park it in the student lot." He doesn't move. "Lazy, get with it or you're surviving on half a bed set."

After freshmen year, we're allowed cars on campus, which means I get to bring my truck. It's more convenient for everyone. This way, Hersh and I can come and go back to Miner Falls whenever we want and I can drive to Panem Children's Hospital to continue my volunteering on Tuesdays. Although, Katniss and I mastered the public transportation system last year, so it wouldn't have been too bad anyway.

Hersh and I unload all the boxes and while I let him settle his side, I go to park the truck in the parking garage designated for students. It doesn't take long to get my permit and register with the office, so I wander around because Hersh takes longer to get his stuff ready than anyone I know and having people in the room tends to slow him down. I pull out my phone on my way back to the districts and see that Katniss texted me her room number.

Lime Hall is the closest freshmen dorm to the sophomore districts, so I wander over. Since my key card will only let me swipe to get into district seven dorms, I lean against the wall and wait for someone to open the door. It doesn't take long for a huge group of freshman to walk out, their lanyards around their necks holding their key cards and signifying to the entire student body what year they are. I made the same mistake and so did everyone else. Live and learn, I suppose.

Katniss's room is on the third, and top, floor and I make my way up. The names on the door are decorated with twitter symbols, each name inside a tiny blue bird and the room number under it in a hash tag. All freshmen dorms are single sex by floor, and I know that Lime is usually boy-girl-girl, so I'm not surprised to see a ton of girls wandering around, their doors open as freshman do to meet people.

Katniss's door, however, is shut. I smile and knock three times. There's a shuffling on the other side and then it opens, Katniss standing on the other side. She smiles and jumps up into my arms, her legs around my waist, which is not what I was expecting. She hugs tightly onto me and kisses my neck once before looking into my eyes. Her glasses are gone. This is what she wants me to notice.

"When'd you lose them, four-eyes?" I joke, walking into the room so we're not in the middle of the hallway.

"Yesterday," she says. "Haymitch took me out of some awful leadership something or other and the doctor said that I only need them to read."

"I'm glad," I say, setting her down on her bed so I can take a look around.

Her side of the room is just as neat as I thought it would be. Her desk is organized by a color-coding system she and Annie figured out for her. On her calendar, red ink means the assignment is time consuming. Green means reading that needs to be done. Orange ink signifies meetings. She has her books all sorted in a shelving unit on her wall. I'm surprised that her comforter isn't green. It's tricolor, starting with pink and bleeding into white before it bleeds into a sunset orange.

I smile. "I like your bedspread."

She rolls her eyes. "Prim picked it," she mutters. "I wanted green."

I'm not surprised.

"Come on up," she says, patting the bed. I jump up on the lofted bed, looking down to see that she has a step stool. It's on the highest notch, which means she'll definitely need help getting up. "I missed you."

Sometimes it astonishes me how far we've come. Two years ago, she told me she didn't believe in love. And then we went through the ringer. There were nights when I was scared I'd wake up to a phone call from Haymitch telling me she died in the night. There were nights when Katniss would call me, terrified that the nightmares she had were real. The hallucinations she suffered from her fever mid-treatment for her relapse scared and scarred her. Sometimes her nightmares are so vivid that she has to call me to hear my voice, terrified I'm really dead.

That was when I realized Katniss was afraid of abandonment, not necessarily afraid of love. It was so obvious that she loved Prim and Haymitch that I knew love itself wasn't the issue. The consequences of love – falling out of it, losing it – were all too real for her. Her father had died in a car accident attempting to get to the hospital to see her. Her mother had killed herself with grief over losing her best friend and then her husband with the probability of losing her daughter that night in the PICU.

But, Katniss is strong and she can overpower fear. I still remember the first time she said she loved me. It had been a little over three months ago, after my last final, and she'd just blurted it out accidentally after I said I missed her. But it was real. She told me real, like I tell her real when we play our game after her nightmares.

I smile. "I love you," I tell her.

She shakes her head at my corny replay of our first declaration of love in reverse. "That's my line," she says, chewing on her bottom lip.

All I do is laugh and pull her into me. She rests her head on my chest and we sit in contented silence, just basking in the knowledge that we're together. I kiss the top of her head before I break the quiet lull that has fallen between us. "So, how has it been?" I ask.

Katniss has been at school for almost a week for the freshmen orientation. Hersh can attest to the fact that I've been worrying about her nonstop. He and Delly told me she'd be fine, she'd make friends, she was easy enough to get along with, but I know Katniss's least favorite thing to do is meet new people. It took her a few times of hanging around Hersh and Delly, even my father and Rye, before she felt comfortable around them. Unlike Prim, who introduces herself with a hug, Katniss has a fight or flight reaction to new things. She likes routines. Being stuck in a new place with thousands of new faces was probably nerve-wracking.

She shrugs and I wait for her to give me more information. She doesn't so I start again. "Do you like your roommate?"

"She seems nice," Katniss says.

I start to rock her back and forth, aware that this conversation is going to be like pulling teeth. She's tense and I want her to relax so I kiss her temple and smile at her. She scowls at my trick, well aware of what I'm doing and shakes her head. She's not getting into this with me right now. So, instead of pushing her, I press my lips to her forehead. "It'll take a while to find the people you'll be friends with," I tell her honestly. "In the mean time, feel free to hang around Poplar. Lots of video game wars, but I think you can handle that."

She smirks. "I'm going to kick your butt."

"It wouldn't take much," I say, pushing her off me so I can jump off the bed. "I suck."

A giggle escapes her lips before she can stop it. "Well, hopefully you're better at video games than you are at baseball," she teases.

I mockingly glare at her. I have to give her that one. Our baseball team won two games my senior season. "Come on, you," I say, taking her waist in my arms and pulling her off the bed. "Here's the deal. You help me unpack and then I whoop your butt at Mario Cart."

Before she can get the stinging comment out about her beating me, I cover her lips with mine.

* * *

Hersh, Dalton, and our other roommate Mitchell leave around eleven after pounding five shots in quick succession. When asked if I wanted in, I just shook my head and Hersh started laughing, deciding it was the perfect time to inform our friends about the one and only time I've ever blacked out. I ended up losing my mind. It was the summer of my junior year of high school and my brother decided it was high time for me to experience the burn of a shot. Leaven said he couldn't go to college without bringing me to a party.

The only thing that accomplished was my inability to remember anything about that night – although, Delly tells me I sang a_ beautiful _cover of Beyoncé's famous 'Single Ladies' complete with a matching dance – and the world's biggest hangover. This, coupled with my mother's screeches at Leaven for his role in my delinquency and my father's disappointed glances in my direction the following day, didn't exactly shoot excessive drinking to the top of my list of things to do on a Friday night. I haven't blacked out since.

I sent Hersh a glare over the screen of my laptop and he just smirked. I thought we had decided that would never be discussed again, but I guess I couldn't be that lucky.

The door slams shut behind them, the three loudly discussing where to head first as they walk down the hallway. I continue the essay I'm writing for my Honors class that should have been written days ago. But days ago I'd been working shifts at the bakery to help my dad out while my mother went back and forth to Roanoke to help Rye and Lux with their new house, although neither asked for her help and probably don't really want it. For the woman who raged at me for going back and forth to the capitol every day, wasting forty-five minutes each way just to see Katniss, she was doing a three-hour trek one way to a different state. It was ridiculous and even mild-mannered Dad was starting to get frustrated.

I never told my mother about being invited into the Honors Program. It was a pretty big deal, considering the invitations came from the heads of the departments and would require extra work and a service-learning project to be done junior year. I told my dad and he was beyond thrilled. I also told Rye when the letter came to the house in June and he'd said he was proud of me.

I've never been that close to Rye before but sometime between my senior year and now I've one-upped Leaven as the favorite brother. Leaven's down in Florida doing his own thing, thousands of miles away, and when he graduates this spring, I don't think he'll come back for much of anything. He's got his girlfriend he met down there – who coincidentally grew up in the Cave Spring area of Roanoke that Rye and Lux moved to – and he's looking to stay there. Part of it, I think, has to do with our mother. She's gotten everything she's ever wanted out of Rye now that he's working and married to Lux and living in the type of area she always wanted to live in. No matter what Leaven does, he'll always be second. At least I've come to terms with the fact that my mother will never think of me as she does Rye, but I think at least up until now Leaven was still trying.

Really, it was only a matter of time before the family self-destructed. In complete honesty, I'm surprised we lasted this long.

I look down at Plato's_ The Allegory of the Cave_ and then back at my screen. I type the quote I'm commenting on, "Education is not what it is said to be by some, who profess to be able to put knowledge into a soul where it is not present, as though putting sight into blind eyes," and then look back at my outline for the theory behind it. I scratch the back of my neck, the walls bumping behind me with music of the party in the room over, and lean my head against the couch. It's not due until Tuesday so technically I have plenty of time. I just want to get it done.

My phone buzzes beside me and I smile. It's nearly eleven so I know exactly who it is – Katniss. Sure enough, her face pops up on the screen, her hands plastered in front of her trying to avoid the camera. She hates that this is what shows up when she calls, but I had to do it. She left Poplar around eight to go to her floor meeting and I wonder what she's been up to since.

"It's so loud," she says when I pick up.

I shake my head. "Welcome to the first night back." She doesn't giggle or make any noise except a yawn, so I have the feeling that she's calling because she can't sleep. "You want to come over here?"

"I don't want to bother you and your friends."

"Well, it's just me and Plato, so I could sure use the company," I joke, slamming the book closed with a bookmark holding the spot I had highlighted. That's all it takes for Katniss to hang up, clearly on her way, so I walk down the stairs to get the door for her. We walk back up the stairs, trying to avoid the drunken mess that elevators become on the weekends, and I type in the code on the door.

We go to the couch and I've barely sat down before she's curled herself up in my lap, her face burrowing into the fabric of my shirt. She's exhausted. I remember the week of orientation. It's hands-on all day, as if they're trying to discourage the night culture by making everyone too tired to function past dinner. It had wiped me out, so I'm not the least bit surprised that it took its toll on her this week.

Despite the fact that her physical appearance is normal, she's still struggling to find normalcy. I think it's one of the reasons why Haymitch pushed her to come here. Her childhood was all but destroyed by disease and death, and by extension her outlook is so much different compared to every other kid our age, myself included. She doesn't look to the future and dream of weddings, children, and dream jobs, like the majority of the girls on her floor. She doesn't look to the future, period. She still lives her life test to test, scan to scan, truly believing each time she goes to his office Dr. Heavensbee is going to tell her she's used up her nine lives.

Her breathing evens out and I kiss the top of her head before gingerly standing up. As carefully as I can, I walk into my room and set her on the lofted bed before climbing in behind her, her quiet breaths relaxing me as I shut my own eyes.

* * *

I wake up in a tangle of limbs with the sunlight flooding in through the cracked shade. We changed positions in the night. Katniss is basically on top of me, her right leg thrown over mine, her face pressed into my side, her hand over her head. Her fingers rest on the pillow so close to my head that when I turn, my lips graze her skin.

A peek at the alarm clock tells me it's around nine. Hersh's bed is empty but slept in across the room. I rub the sleep from my eyes and disentangle myself from Katniss with care, as not to wake her. When I succeed, I slide off the bed and eye her for a moment, but she stays resting so I head out into the suite. Dalton and Mitch must still be sleeping, which doesn't surprise me, and the common room is covered in Chinese food containers.

I'm about to pick them up when I hear someone pound the code into the door. It swings open and Hersh walks in with a container from the dining hall in one hand and a bottle of orange juice in the other. He always wakes up early after a night drinking and tends to go for a run to try and pick himself up. I roll my eyes and he glares at me, taking the iPod armband off his arm and taking the headphones out of his ears.

"Morning, sunshine," I say.

He kicks off his sneakers and glares at me. "Shut up," he says, collapsing at the table and running a hand over his face. "I shouldn't be awake."

"Rough night?"

He chuckles. "I don't really remember," he says, looking down at his food and scrunching his nose. "You want this? It's biscuits and gravy. I'm not sure I can do this."

"Then why did you get it?" I ask, sliding into the chair beside him.

The container gets pushed in front of me and Hersh shrugs. "I dunno. I ran about a tenth of a mile and decided _that_ wasn't happening, so I stopped at the dining hall. It made sense at the time." I grab one of the biscuits, getting the gravy all over my hand. "How was your night? I see you didn't get that essay done."

"Yeah, Katniss was having trouble sleeping." He wiggles his eyebrows and I flick the remaining gravy on my fingers toward him. "Not like that, doofus."

"Oh, come on, Peet," he says. "Lighten up."

It's not like this is the first time Hersh has teased me about the physical side of my relationship. Sleeping with Katniss is the last thing on my mind. Okay, maybe it's not the last thing – that type of connection to her is one that I'm looking forward to in the future – but she is in absolutely no way ready and I respect that. She needs to love herself first and understand that I don't see her for her scars before we move pass the stage we're at now.

Which, as Hersh likes to tease me for, is kissing. He told me once that we're like a pair of middle schoolers. She's fine with handholding and I've been surprised to see that she is extremely touchy in this sense. Personally, I think this goes back to her fear of abandonment whether she realizes it or not. If she's touching me, I can't leave. I kiss her forehead or cheek as much as I do her lips, but this is partially because I know she's not a huge fan of public displays of affection. Whenever anything happens in public, she has to initiate it because I don't want her uncomfortable. That's one reason why we're reserved.

And then there's the one time I gave her a hickey. That halted any passion for a while.

My roommate freshman year walked onto the baseball team and, as a result, would spend extended amounts of time away from campus for travelling and games. Katniss would come hang out and occasionally she'd stay the night. At the time, I thought Haymitch was the coolest guardian ever for trusting her that much, but it was only after she bit me and I retaliated that I realized she just wasn't telling him. In hindsight, it made sense as to why she needed to leave so early in the morning.

When Hersh saw me with the discoloration on my neck, he said _finally_. I suppose he was right. At that point, Katniss and I had been together for almost a year and had yet to do much more than get chapped lips and become out of breath.

Haymitch, on the other hand, was not as pleased with our newest development as Hersh. Prim pointed out the hickey at breakfast and Katniss, being Katniss, tried to avoid embarrassment and just ended up making everything worse. Apparently, she said she didn't know where it was from and Haymitch went into full out panic mode. He grabbed her chin, looked at the hickey, and nearly dragged her out the door, dead set on taking her to the emergency room for a blood test and meeting with her oncologist, Dr. Heavensbee, in fear she was relapsing. I thought for sure I was going to get an arrow through the eye for that incident, especially with the looks I got from Haymitch for the next month. Needless to say, Katniss was held under lock and key at night until I left for home at the end of the semester.

"I'm just kidding," Hersh says after I haven't responded.

I know he's kidding. Hersh is about as eager as a cat jumping into a lake when it comes to being serious about deep emotions. His coping strategy has always been to spin it into a comedic light. This is why I roll my eyes and flick a little more gravy in his direction, a symbol of truce, and lean back in my chair. Unlike our other friends, he knows what Katniss has been through and knows just how far to take his jokes. He knows he can direct them at me and not her. And, on top of that, he knows when to actually be there, struggling with his awkward hugs and comfort when I really need it.

"It's cool," I say.

Hersh nods and taps his fingers on the table. "So, uh…did she sleep well?"

"Yeah." To be honest, I hadn't even realized how well we both slept last night. Katniss's nightmares are commonplace, to the point where I spent many nights in the hallway of my dorm last year on the phone with her when she woke up terrified that I had been killed in some sort of explosion her mind had thought up. "No nightmares."

"What about you?"

My nightmares are usually about losing Katniss. I don't scream out or anything, but instead I tend to wake up paralyzed in fear that I've dreamt the last few years. Sometimes I wake up fully believing she's dead, that I spoke at her funeral, that Prim's stem cells somehow didn't work and Katniss's cancer came back with a vengeance. Hersh knows about this. Delly forced me into telling them when I hadn't slept one night and had bags under my bloodshot eyes when I saw them the next day.

I guess sleeping with her in my arms benefited me as much as it did her.

"Great," I tell him.

He nods his head and looks at our door. "Well, tell her she's welcome anytime," he says and then his serious face breaks and he turns to me with a smirk. "As long as I don't start hearing noises I shouldn't. Don't want to ruin my innocence, you know?"

I roll my eyes and he snorts with a bit of laughter before putting his head back in his hands. He stands up and takes a deep breath, looking into the common room. "What a mess," he mumbles. "I'm going to go take a shower. I think I'm still drunk."

He walks into our room, comes out with a t-shirt and shorts, and smirks. "Sleeping beauty's looking for her prince," he teases before walking into the bathroom and shutting the door. Once the water turns on, I get up out of my chair and go into our room.

Katniss is sitting up and rubbing her eyes. Half of her braid has fallen out in the night and hangs around her shoulder. I smile and walk toward her, jumping up beside her and tugging on what's left of her braid.

"How did you sleep?" I ask.

She smiles shyly. "These rooms are nice," she says. "They aren't as loud."

"Yeah, the walls aren't as thin," I say, knocking on the cinderblock. The walls in the freshman dorms are made of plaster and, therefore, anything can be heard through them, especially freshman parties that stuff dozens of kids in a two-person room.

"And I didn't have any nightmares," she adds.

"I know." I kiss her forehead and smile, staring into her eyes that are still full of sleep but look rested. "If you ever need to, you come over here and sleep. Alright?"

She nods and I collapse beside her, wrapping her up in my arms. I lean against the wall, pulling her into my lap. I swear I could stay here for days. Katniss rests her head against my chest and lets out a sigh. "So," I say, my fingers playing with the tip of her braid. "What are your plans for the day?"

I think I've said something wrong. She pulls away from me faster than I thought humanly possible and eyes me with concern. "Plans?" she asks in a small voice. "What do you mean?"

I shrug. "I don't know. It's a Saturday before we get any real work. Did any of the girls on your floor mention doing anything?"

Katniss looks down at the floor and shakes her head. "Are you doing anything today?" she asks and it's so quiet I can barely hear her.

My eye falls to the philosophy book on my floor that Hersh must have put there last night because I had left all my things on the couch. "I have a short paper to write." It almost sounds like a groan coming out. I really don't want to write that paper.

When I turn back, Katniss has looked up from the floor, her eyes wide like a puppy about to get a treat. I frown at her reaction but it doesn't change. "I can stay and help," she says, her voice suddenly loud and confident.

I laugh at the suggestion. "Katniss," I tease. "I'll never get anything done if I have you around to distract – "

"I won't distract you," she interrupts.

She's fidgeting, playing with the hem of her shirt, so I reach out and take her chin in my hand. Now that I can look into her eyes, I can see that she's legitimately anxious about something. "What's the matter?" I ask. She shakes her head, but I don't let go and repeat my question.

She avoids my eyes when she answers. "I'm not good at making friends."

I want to slap myself on the forehead for being so stupid. How had I not thought about this? Katniss has anxiety anyway. Put her in a new place with people who have no idea what she's been through, it's enough to send anyone into seclusion, let alone her. No wonder she's been so clingy. I've just been reaping the benefits. My teeth grind together as I think about how to proceed.

I take her hand and tangle our fingers together. "You still don't understand the effect you have on people," I say, leaning forward to kiss her temple. She sighs and I keep my lips on her skin, even as she struggles to move away because she doesn't believe me. She stops squirming and I look into her eyes.

"Do you trust me?" I ask. She nods. "You will make friends. I promise."

She crawls toward me again and collapses into my lap, nuzzling my chest and wrapping her arms around me, and I resign to the fact that I'm not getting my essay done again.

* * *

There is a handle of vodka on Katniss's roommate's desk when we stop there later in the day. I don't think much of it until I notice Katniss has stopped midstride on her way to her desk to get her books. I'm at her desk, so I grab the book I know she needs and stick it in her backpack before looking up. She's glancing from me to the alcohol, as if waiting for me to stay something.

"What?" I ask.

She points at the desk but doesn't say anything. I have to think fast. To be honest, I don't know Katniss's stance on alcohol. I know she grew up with Haymitch, so she's not ignorant as to its effects, but other than that we've never really talked about it.

"You don't have to drink if you don't want to," I say.

She looks up at me. "Is that what _you_ do on the weekends?" I don't know what she wants me to say. "Is that why you wanted me to have plans?"

"No," I tell her. "I asked if you had plans because I want you to make friends so you'll be happy."

She lets her arm fall and then kicks her sandal against the carpet. I set her backpack down on the ground and walk toward her. I lift her up on her bed and lean between her legs, taking her hands in my own. "Talk to me."

At first, she doesn't say anything, but I wait. I just keep staring at her until she cracks and sighs. "I'm scared I'm not going to make any friends and you're going to get sick of me always being in your hair."

"I will never get sick of you," I tell her.

She closes her eyes and I lean forward enough to kiss the hollow of her neck. The frown that has found its way to her face remains and I let go of her hands to take her face. "Katniss, open your eyes," I say. She does and I find myself lost in seas of gray. "I love you."

Her face cracks slightly. "I love you, too."

"All I want is for you to be happy," I continue. "It's become my purpose in life. Do you understand how special you are? Don't worry about friends. I'm sorry I've been pushing it. You won't necessarily make your best friends the first week of school and I shouldn't have insinuated that you would. I just wanted you to be happy so that's why I kept asking about if you were making friends."

She looks confused, so I keep going.

"You don't have to change yourself to make friends," I say. I point toward the vodka. "If you don't want to drink, don't. People that are important enough for your time will respect that."

She stares at me and brings one of our joined pairs of hands to my face. "Peeta, you have to stop doing that," she says. "You take my stupid personality traits and turn them into your problems."

"It's because I love you."

She snorts and rolls her eyes. "Now you're just being a sap."

"Hey!" I exclaim, breaking our contact and wrapping my arms around her waist. She squeals and leans back, but my arms restrain her. I press my face to her stomach and she throws her head back, giggling as I use my nose to nuzzle her, tickling her in the process.

I stop when she starts screaming and pull her down off the bed. "Come on. Library," I say. "I really need to get this paper done and if we stay here, I'm not going to do it. We'll continue this later. We'll have a movie night."

"Don't you want to go out with your friends?" she asks, the same look on her face as she had earlier when she told me I'd eventually get sick of her.

"I just want to spent every possible minute of the rest of my life with you," I say.

She rolls her eyes and takes her backpack, throwing the straps over her shoulders before heading for her door. She spins around and raises her eyebrows teasingly. "Come on, then," she says, holding out her hand for me to take.

I don't have to be asked twice.

* * *

I walk Katniss to her first class and the closer we get to the lecture hall the more her shoulders slump. By the time we reach the door, she's shaking, so I pull her around the corner and press my forehead to hers.

"Hey, look at me," I whisper. She opens her eyes and looks up. "You're going to be fine. It's a huge lecture anyway, so you don't even have to talk."

She nods unconvincingly and I kiss the tip of her nose. "I'll come here after my class lets out, okay? Seventy-five minutes and then you get to see this ugly mug again."

That gets the response I wanted. She rolls her eyes and lets out a chuckle, shaking her head. "I like that ugly mug," she mumbles. She eyes the door and takes a deep breath. "You better go. I don't want you to be late."

"You'll be fine," I say, kissing her forehead and turning around. I keep looking back until she walks through the door of the building and then I look at my watch, powerwalking across the quad to my building. Like Katniss's, my class is a large lecture, so I'm not planning on paying much attention. The first week of classes is always lax, considering it is still add/drop and the professors mainly go over the syllabus.

I find the lecture hall and walk in, standing at the front to try and find a seat. The room is packed. I knew this class was popular, but I wasn't expecting this.

"Peeta!"

My eyes fly to the left side of the hall and I see someone waving toward me. It takes me a minute to place him, but once I do I walk up the stairs and sit down in the seat next to him. Thresh volunteered at PCH on a different day than me, and then he graduated a year of ahead of me, so I never really had a chance to meet him. However, since I've become friends with Rue, I've gotten to know Thresh better through her. He lives down the road from her and he helps out on her family's farm, so I've seen him a few times.

"How did you get in this class?" he asks. "Sophomores never get in."

I shrug. "It was open when I went to sign up."

"Lucky," he says. "I didn't realize you were a bio major."

With a shake of my head, I let out a laugh. "I'm still undecided. I just thought this would be interesting."

Thresh nods. "You still volunteering?" I nod. "I ran into Rue the other day when I was there. She said Katniss is here. You must be excited."

"Oh, you know," I say with a laugh. "It's definitely nice."

It has been nice having Katniss so close. I thought it was great last year when she was only a short bus ride away, but having her only a few buildings away at all times is even better. This weekend, we definitely took advantage of that and the fact that we don't have Haymitch and Prim watching us at all times. We went to the library so I could get my paper done and Katniss almost finished the book Prim wanted her to read. She'd been begging her all summer to read it and since the movie is coming out in November time is ticking. She even bought it for her as a going away present. But after that we just spent time together. We watched a couple movies, played on the Dalton's PlayStation, and talked for hours before going to sleep in each other's arms. And, of course, we spent some time letting our mouths become reacquainted after the week of separation.

I get pulled out of my thoughts by the class's hushed silence. Thresh pulls out his notebook and I look down to the front of the room. I've heard great things about Professor Beetee. They say that you should take one of his classes prior to graduation, regardless of your major. I don't know what exactly I was expecting him to look like, but he's hurriedly setting up his laptop on the desk with an almost fidgety air. He's small, with an ashen face and dark hair. His round glasses look too big for his face, as if they were made for someone with a larger head, and they continuously slide down his nose.

The slideshow pops up on the big screen and he steps out from behind the podium.

"Uh, welcome," he says. "Is everyone here for BI316? Intro to Bioethics?"

The class shrugs, for lack of a better word. There are a few mumbles and a bunch of nods. Professor Beetee smiles and pulls out a fancy clicker for his slideshow and starts his presentation. The first slide is a little information on himself. Professor Beetee is a leading researcher in the field of medical ethics. Originally a president of a biotech firm, he ultimately became interested in the uses and ethics of various products and procedures his company helped create. He even went back to school to get a Ph.D. The credentials of this guy alone are enough for me to realize why everyone wants to take his class.

Unlike most professors, he doesn't start out with the syllabus. He dives right in, posting a real case in the bioethics world for us to learn about. He explains the case, in which a man needing cardiovascular surgery refused to consent to possible blood transfusions for religious reasons. The doctors agreed. After surgery, he required a transfusion, the doctors gave it to him under the pretext that it wasn't during surgery and his family okayed it. Now the man is suing.

As he explains, I find myself completely mesmerized. It brings me back to Katniss and her stem cell transplant. Like the man in the case, she refused consent; she didn't want Prim's stem cells. But her opinions were overlooked and Haymitch hid the truth from her for months. As Professor Beetee continues on, asking the class when we begin to have the choice to choose our own medical treatment, I try to imagine a world where Katniss was taken seriously. She wouldn't be here.

"What do we do?" Professor Beetee asks. "How do we go about deciding who exactly is in the right – the physician or the patient? This is where we'll start on Thursday."

Stealing a glance at my watch and seeing that my class let out early, I stuff my books in my bag before walking down the steps, barely saying goodbye to Thresh. I'm a man on a mission.

"Professor, do you have a minute?" I ask as I approach him. He's disconnecting his laptop and he stops to look up.

"I do if you have a question," he says with a smile.

I grin. "Thanks," I say. "I'm just intrigued by how the case plays out, I guess. I was thinking about how this sort of plays out with a minor instead of a grown man."

Professor Beetee leans against his podium and nods his head. "Yes, that would complicate the situation even more. It would really depend on the age in that case and how aware of the consequences they are, and if the parents agree or not."

"Seems complicated."

He fiddles with his glasses. "It is. Case by case, different situations add different complexes and often times we are dealing with minimum time requirements."

"I was just wondering because my girlfriend had a stem cell transplant about two years ago now and she had an issue with consent."

"Interesting," Professor Beetee says after I explain a little further. We converse on the subject for another five or ten minutes and he starts looking more and more excited the more we speak. After a good chunk of time, he asks my name and shakes my hand, the rest of the class having left. "I think you'll really enjoy the reading, Peeta."

When I leave I head to get Katniss. I walk into the building and take a seat on a bench in the lobby. I sneak a look at my watch and see that her lecture should end soon, so I pull out a book. When I finish the chapter, I frown and look at my watch again. There is no way a syllabus week first lecture lasted this long. So I put the book back in my bag and walk toward her room. The door is open and I don't hear anything, so I peek inside to see the classroom empty. I check my phone. No messages. I climb the stairs of the lecture hall while texting her and walk through the backdoor.

I put my phone back in my pocket and sigh when I see her, curled up on the ground with her knees to her chest. She's sitting in the corner, looking up at me with wide gray eyes.

"How long have you been sitting here?" I ask, walking toward her and sitting down.

She shakes her head and I mimic her position. "What's wrong?"

"I had to sit in the front row," she whispers, breathing shakily as she does. "The professor asked our row to demonstrate reflexes to the class. The whole class laughed at me."

"Oh, Katniss," I say, blowing out a breath. I thought lectures would be good for her because she wouldn't have to talk. Of course, she'd be in the one lecture where the professor has the kids demonstrate concepts in front of two hundred peers.

"Kat, why are you sitting in a stairwell?" I ask, trying to get her mind off the actual class.

She shrugs. "No one was here." She turns to me and bites her lip, closing her lids over her watery eyes. "I want to go home."

I let my legs fall to the ground so I can pull her into my lap. The urge to call Haymitch or just carry her to my truck and drive her there myself is overwhelming. My chin rests on the top of her head and I don't say anything. I'm not bringing her home. It is in her best interest to stay. As much as it hurts to see her like this now, I know that in the long run this will be for her benefit.

"Hey," I whisper in her ear. "Have you checked out Mags'?"

She frowns and shakes her head.

"Well, then we got to go," I say, standing up with her still in my arms. "It's a diner run by this little old lady. She makes the best fries and Hersh swears by her chocolate shakes."

Katniss looks up at me with her big gray eyes wide and I lean down to kiss her forehead, keeping her in my arms for just a moment longer. It's the only place I can keep her where I know she'll be safe. I'll be selfish and keep her there until her next class. I'm sure she won't mind.

* * *

The next four days are torturous in that I worry every time Katniss goes to class. But, she isn't called to the front of any of the lecture halls again and does fine. I have nothing to worry about and Hersh keeps telling me to stop fidgeting. I've never had a nervous foot tap before, but I'm coming to develop one.

On Thursday, Professor Beetee stops me on my way to my seat and hands me a stapled packet of paper. "I think you'll find this interesting," he says. Thresh teases me about being a teacher's pet, but I focus on skimming the packet prior to class starting. It's a group of cases about stem cell transplants in various situations. I go to his Friday office hours while Katniss is in class to talk about them.

After her last class on Friday, Katniss doesn't leave my side. Hersh calls her my little shadow. I know it's because of how uncomfortable she's been this week. As if to emphasize how stressed she's been, she's had nightmares every night. On Thursday night I just gave up and walked over to Lime and took her back with me to Poplar. I found her sitting in her hallway, curled up in a ball and shaking as she listened to the recording Prim put on her phone. I told her to grab her stuff for Friday and literally carried her across the field to my dorm.

We stop in front of her house and I see her shoulders instantly relax. It's Saturday morning and most of campus is still asleep. Katniss is going home for the weekend and, after the night she had last night, I realized the quicker she saw Prim and Haymitch the better.

When we walk in, I can hear Prim in the kitchen, eagerly telling Haymitch something over the clinking of breakfast dishes. When the door shuts behind us, she comes running and she launches herself on Katniss. It's weird to see Prim taller than her sister. It's only by a couple inches, but those last few inches really make a powerful punch. It makes me wonder how tall Katniss would have been. Maybe the drugs didn't affect her, but I'm inclined to believe her growth was stunted.

"How's college?" Prim squeals. Her arms still wrapped firmly around Katniss's neck. "I missed you so much!"

"I miss you too, little duck," Katniss says, her voice sounding more at ease than I've heard it in days. "So much."

Prim reluctantly lets go and Katniss walks to Haymitch, who's leaning against the doorframe. He kisses the top of her head and rolls his eyes. "Aww, sweetheart, did you really miss me that much?" he teases.

"No," she says, but we all know otherwise.

"Come on, I'm attempting breakfast," he says. "It's funny. Right, blondie?"

Prim giggles. "You might want to stick with cereal."

Katniss shakes her head but follows Haymitch into the kitchen. Once they're out of the room, Prim throws her arms around me. I chuckle at her bubbly personality. Some things just don't change.

Prim pulls back and looks at my face, her fingers reaching up to trace the dark circles I know are under my eyes. Last night was terrible. It didn't seem to matter if she was in my arms or not, her nightmares were so vivid I swear I could see them when she started muttering. Luckily Hersh was all but dead to the world next to us because she woke up nearly every hour. Or rather, I had to wake her up, and finally around six I just took her into the common room and kept her awake until we left.

"You look tired."

"I'm exhausted," I tell her truthfully.

Prim eyes the door Katniss just left through and turns back to me. "What happened?"

I shake my head. "It was just a rough night," I say. "I've been letting her sleep with me but it didn't help."

She sighs and looks down at the ground. "That happened this summer too," she says. "Haymitch went crazy trying to get something to help her, but the sleeping pills they put her on just got her trapped in the dreams."

"I just wish there was more I could do," I confess.

"I know," she says. She feels the same way.

I follow her into the kitchen. Katniss is sitting at the island with a cup of juice in front of her and is laughing at Haymitch's poor attempts of pancakes still on Prim's plate. They're terrible cooks, all three of them, and it always surprised me. But Prim told me they either ate out or their neighbor Sae would cook for them if she saw the delivery car come too often. Prim's a decent baker though. She says it's different than actual cooking and I know better than anyone how true that can be.

As I sit down beside Katniss, Prim on her other side, Haymitch slaps a plate in front of her. The eggs are runny. The toast is burnt. The effort and love is clearly there, but the food does look less than desirable. Katniss sticks her nose up at it.

"This looks disgusting," she states.

"I don't care what it _looks _like," Haymitch says, as if she's said something completely ridiculous. "You're eating it. I send you to that goddamn school and you come back skinnier than you were when you left!"

This is a constant battle between the two of them. Given Prim's body type, I'm inclined to believe Katniss would have a slight figure and fast metabolism by genetics alone. The drugs that saved her life screwed that all up. She has to consume a specific number of calories a day to maintain her weight and the number is extraordinarily high for a nineteen-year-old girl. It wouldn't be difficult if her digestive tract didn't get messed up in the process of healing her as well. It's hard enough for such a tiny girl to eat that much as it is, but add in the food restrictions and I know she has a schedule given to her by her dietician on what to eat at what times to make sure she's taking in enough nutrients. She eats the same thing every day in a monotonous routine that soothes her. It gives her structure.

"What the hell happened to the freshman fifteen?"

"I've been there for two weeks!" Katniss exclaims.

Haymitch rolls his eyes. "That's plenty of time. Am I right, Peeta?"

Prim bursts into laughter, so I'm sure my face is hilarious as I look back and forth between the two as they bicker. Yeah, that sounds like a _good_ idea – drag me into it to choose a side. I glare at Haymitch and he laughs, nodding at Katniss. "You're good, sweetheart," he says. "Got this one wrapped right around your finger."

Katniss smirks at me. She knows that already. It's so blatantly obvious that I plan my life around her that she'd have to be blind not to notice. I wiggle my eyebrows in her direction and she blushes, looking down at her plate.

Prim stands up from her stool and nods in my direction. "Want some cereal?" she asks. "You don't need to eat this."

Haymitch glares at her but she just bounces toward the cabinets. I follow after her as she attempts to jump up and reach the top shelf without a stool. With a chuckle, I lift her up and she reaches for the Cheerios giggling. I drop her on the counter and reach for a couple bowls. When I turn around, Haymitch is sitting on the stool Prim once occupied. I look at Prim. She looks at the floor.

"Hey, look at me," I can hear Haymitch say. It's quiet, as if he thinks Prim and I can't hear or that Katniss will be more likely to listen to him if she believes that. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Katniss says.

"You're eating?" She makes a noise in the back of her throat. Haymitch groans. "_Katniss_."

"I'm. Fine."

I can already tell this isn't going to go well. Katniss and Haymitch are two sides of the same coin. Both are stubborn and opinionated. Haymitch eyes her with his eyebrows raised. He doesn't believe her. Despite what Katniss and Prim say jokingly about their alcohol-favoring, geese-raising guardian, Haymitch Abernathy lives his life for these two girls and, as a result, he knows Katniss better than she thinks he does. He knows, just as Prim and I do, that Katniss isn't fine, but she'd die before she tells him, or Prim and me for that matter, that she's struggling.

It's not so much that she's struggling with eating, which is how Haymitch was trying to segue into the conversation. It's that she's never been in an environment like this before and she is terrible with new places. If we expected her to jump in and stick a perfect landing, we were all disillusioned.

And, I think, for a moment we all were.

Katniss stands up from her stool and pushes her plate away, effectively knocking it over so it launches off the island and onto the floor with the sound of cracking glass. With a look around the room, she spins on her heel and storms off, her usually quiet footfalls heavy on the stairs.

Haymitch runs a hand over his face. "I imagined that going better."

I walk across the room and climb the stairs. She's slammed her door shut and when I knock she doesn't respond. The door clicks open when I push on it and I sigh at the lump curled up under her dark green comforter. The walk across her room seems heavy, as if I'm moving through a raging river, and the mattress sinks under my weight. She still doesn't move or make a peep.

"I've always wondered about that bow," I say, my eyes flying to the bow in the corner of her room. Her bedroom is just as empty, if not more so, than it has always been and so the bow sticks out more than it did before. "Are you as good as Haymitch?"

Again, nothing. So, I walk across the room and take it in my hands. I lift my eyes to see if she's moved and I can see her face sticking out from under the covers, watching me intently. "You'll have to teach me," I say, holding the bow backwards and pretending to shoot.

"You're holding it the wrong way," I hear.

I smile and feign innocence. While I've never actually gone hunting with a bow before, I know the correct way to hold one. Miner Falls takes pride in the fact that we raised Haymitch Abernathy, Olympic archer, despite the fact that everyone in town just remembers him for his drunkenness after his wife died. Because of this, our gym class dedicates a week of work toward teaching kids the basics of shooting a bow and arrow on the off chance that someone will prove to be the next great archery legend. So far, it hasn't happened yet.

"So teach me," I say.

She lets out a breath and rolls out from under the covers and pads across the room. She takes the bow in her hands and models the correct way. It's hot. As undistinguished as that sounds, there are not better words for it. Katniss looks like she was made to handle the wooden bow.

She drops her arms and looks up at me with her eyes slightly glassy. "This was my dad's," she says.

I suck in a breath. Katniss doesn't talk about her parents. Her past, for all intents and purposes, is off limits. She doesn't talk about her father who died on his way to see her, her overwhelmed mother who killed herself, her best friend who asked her to kiss him so he knew what it felt like before he died. I've learned bits and pieces about each of them and that's it.

She sets the bow on the ground and sighs, looking up at me with a look I'm not exactly sure I've seen before and don't even know how to describe. She blinks and then turns to her window, crossing her arms over her chest and focusing on the yard. I follow behind her and see that Prim is outside now, feeding something to the geese. One of them begins to chase after her and she runs, giggling as if she's five years old again. Katniss sighs.

"Katniss, talk to me," I say, taking a risk by wrapping my arms around her shoulders.

Over her shoulder, I can see her fiddling with the bracelet on her wrist. It's a stainless steel cable of twisted metal that connects to her medical alert ID tag. It says _Stem Cell Transplant – Use Irradiated & Leukocyte Poor Blood Products Only _on one side and on the other has a green medical cross.

"I'm never going to be normal," she says. She turns in my arms so that she's looking into my eyes. "Real or not real?"

I blink.

When I don't answer immediately, Katniss pulls out of my arms and looks down to Prim again. Her eyes follow her sister and I know exactly what she's thinking. Prim can run around and do as she pleases without having Haymitch breathing down her neck with worry. Prim can bruise. Prim can eat what she wants. Prim can get bit by the geese for all anyone cares.

"Normal is relative," I say.

When she turns back to me, her eyes are filled with tears. I bite my lip, hoping I haven't said anything wrong.

"Why me?" she asks.

I'm not entirely sure what she means. It could be anything. Why did she get sick? Why did she survive? I look into her eyes, trying to figure out what she means and I see my answer very subtly in her features – the way she has her lips pouted, the fog of her gray eyes, the fact that her eyes are locked on my lips and not my eyes. She's not asking me about her health or her future or her luck. She's asking about me.

And then, as if to stop my questioning, she clarifies. "Why did you stay?"

I use my fingers to lift her chin so she's staring me. "Because there's no one else that fits in my heart," I tell her.

I'm half-expecting her to roll her eyes like she usually does when I make comments like this. I'm fully expecting her to call me out for reading romance novels in the dark of the night to get these cheesy lines. But she doesn't. She needs to hear this.

"I think I even knew it when I was five and wrote you those letters. I knew that there was something about you that would change my life. I knew that you'd be it for me." I rest my forehead on hers. "I don't care if you're normal or not. I love you. That's real. Trust me, that will _always_ be real."

"Will it?" she asks. She ducks her head.

I truly hate that Katniss has gone through this. When I met Katniss the first time she was guarded but sure of herself. Now is different. She's self-conscious more than not. I know she hates her scars. I know that she's terrified of meeting new people partially for the reason that she thinks people will judge her. She thinks she's broken. Her ordeal has changed her and I still love her but sometimes I just don't know what to do to help her.

"Katniss," I say. "Always. Always, always, always. I'm yours."

I pull her into me and feel her tense shoulders relax. I want to keep her here forever. I want to never let her go. I want to tell her that she is perfect in every way. And, I suppose, the only way to convince Katniss is to show her. I'll spend the rest of my life doing that if it's what she needs.

* * *

I think my ears are bleeding. I can almost picture the blood seeping out, trailing down my neck, and onto my shirt. When we leave, I know I'm not going to be able to hear. Hersh stands on one side of me, Mitch on the other, and both are utterly enjoying themselves, singing along with the artist that came for the fall concert as if they're not the world's worst duet.

All I can think is that Katniss would have hated this.

Katniss doesn't enjoy loud noises. For the past few years, I've taken Prim – and Rue and Rory last year – to Miner Falls to watch the fireworks for the Fourth of July. The first year I took Prim, Katniss had been in the hospital. The next year, I'd dropped Prim off and walked up to see her only to find her in her favorite hiding place – her closet. The capitol's spectacular launches their fireworks out of the park near their house, and Katniss can hear everything. Haymitch and Katniss spent the time in her closet while she shook in fear.

She went home for the weekend as she's gotten to doing. Especially now that midterms are upon us, she's been stressing too much and it's leading to nightmares. On top of that, her homework load is at its peak and she's doing nothing on the weekends besides homework trying to keep up with everything. She usually stays on Friday and spends the night with me before I drop her off on Saturday mornings. However, she left right after class today and I'm pretty sure she did it so I would go to the concert and not think that I needed to stay with her.

Because I would. And she knows that.

Hersh said that tonight is my night to let loose. I've gone out with them before on Saturdays when Katniss has been home. In fact, after my first exam I woke up Sunday morning with the worst hangover I've ever had. We usually end up somewhere in the junior dorms where Hersh knows a hulk named Blight from his Spanish practicum. Once I headed out to a rager Thresh's room was throwing. I haven't outright told Katniss about my drinking, but I think she knows. I mean, I basically outed myself when I texted her a poorly misspelled love letter at three in the morning before Hersh could rip the phone out of my hands. Katniss hasn't said anything and I don't know if I should bring it up or not. Hersh says I'm overthinking things, that if Katniss was that concerned or upset she'd say something, but I know that sometimes she lets things boil inside her until she's a raging fireball.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and my thumbs fly across the screen. _I miss you _

The phone vibrates almost immediately in response. _I miss you too_

_I'm not going to be able to sleep without you _

We've been at school for almost two months and I've spent a good proportion of those nights with her in my arms be it in my bed, the blow up bed we have in the common room, or in Katniss's room when her roommate's away. I can't sleep without her. I toss and turn when I wake up in the middle of the night without her beside me and I just lay there for hours waiting to text her until she texts me so I don't wake her up. I'm pretty sure it's unhealthy how dependent I've become and that is one of the many reasons why I didn't fight her about leaving campus on the weekends.

My phone vibrates. _Sleep here. I'll leave my window open ;)_

I snort but the music is so loud no one even thinks anything of it. Sleep over at her house? I understand that she doesn't see Haymitch as a huge threat, but I do. I'd rather not have to deal with a man who is known as a professional archer after having climbed through a window to the girl he sees as his own daughter's room.

_Haymitch would bury me in a ditch._

_Probs. He still brings up the hickey all the time._

My point exactly. The man knows how to hold a grudge. And he has weapons in that house. Not a good combination.

My phone vibrates again before I can answer. _ You can give me one on Sunday. It'll be gone before he sees me again, right?_

God, she's trying to kill me. _I love you._

We have a smiley face war for the rest of the concert and I continue texting her until she goes to bed. Suddenly, with my mind off of my conversation with Katniss, the party I'm at with Hersh, Mitch, and Dalton is less fun. I tell Hersh I'm heading out and walk back to Poplar, jumping in bed and just laying there, trying to get to sleep.

* * *

Katniss nips at my chin, her back arching off the bed in order to reach, and then falls back against my pillows. I bury my face into the crook of her neck, kissing every inch of her skin. When I move so I can reach the other side, my math book flies off the bed and lands on the floor. I ignore it and continue my current work of sucking her neck all the way up to her chin before taking her lips again.

Her hands slither down my arms and then back up and over my chest. This isn't the first time that she's touched there, but every time she does I feel like I'm on fire. This is no exception. I'm a living, breathing inferno and, when she slides her fingers underneath to actually touch my skin, I'm sure I'm about ready to spontaneously combust. Instead, I pull my lips away and kiss the last bit of visible skin before her shirt covers her.

We moan in unison.

Katniss tugs on my shirt and I sit up, the fabric suddenly too unbearable. It's too hot, too constricting, and too everything. I lift it up over my head and it falls to the ground with my math book, hoping to be forgotten. When I look back, already halfway to Katniss's mouth, I find that she's staring.

"Is this okay?"

She nods.

This isn't the first time that I've been shirtless, but it's one of the few times. I'm always nervous to push her too much. I want her to be comfortable so I let her lead. She kisses my chest, where my heart is, and then sucks on my collarbone. I am so glad that I did all my work on Saturday – and Hersh didn't – so I could get the room for when Katniss came back. I don't know what's gotten into her, but I'm not going to complain.

Katniss is about as pure as an angel. She blushes during movies, when sex is only implied, and the guys like to tease her about it. Even Prim teases her about it, now that she's fifteen and has been reading Seventeen with Rue. (I'm pretty sure Haymitch is thrilled with Katniss's aversion. Not so thrilled about Prim, as I've been on the receiving end of a text rant about how Rory isn't allowed in the house when Haymitch isn't there anymore and they're _just friends_.) Because of this, when Katniss kisses my heart again, her mouth feathering over my sternum and down my stomach, I raise an eyebrow and pull back.

She bites her bottom lip. "Is that wrong?" she asks quietly.

I shake my head. "No, it's just...what..."

Katniss turns the color of a tomato. "I want to make you feel good," she whispers.

I lean down and kiss the tip of her nose. "I feel good when _you_ feel good," I tell her. My hand cradles her cheek and I wait until she makes eye contact with me before continuing. "I'm not happy unless you are."

"I am," she says. "I'm happy when I'm with you."

My eyes lock on hers and I look for any sort of signal. We have become comfortable in our slow-moving progression, or at least I have. I know what she likes and how far to go. This is unchartered territory. I lean back on my heels, kneeling in front of her, and take a deep breath.

First I grab her hand and kiss her palm, something I do often. She hates the scars on her hands so I make it a point to kiss them. I'd like to think that it makes her feel beautiful instead of broken. She keeps her eyes on me as I set her hand back down beside her and take her other hand, kissing the palm.

"I want to ravish you, Miss Everdeen," I say with a smirk.

She rolls her eyes and I lean forward, puckering my lips obnoxiously. She doesn't kiss me. Instead, she says, "I think you need to lay off the romantic novels. You're beginning to sound like Jane Austen's mouthpiece." I keep my lips where they are and she pushes me away playfully.

"Remember, we're madly in love, so it's all right to kiss me anytime you feel like it," I say. She scowls and I laugh. "Oh, come on, that was an original Peeta Mellark! I know I'm not published, but still..."

I let my fingers fall to the hem of her shirt and keep looking up at her eyes, watching for any fleeting look of fear to overcome those gray orbs. I get to her bellybutton and stop, looking up to check, before pushing it up to her ribs. Just like her hands, she has some scarring on her stomach. She hasn't let me even see it before. Instinctively, she goes to put her hands over her skin, but I move my face to kiss it, effectively blocking her arms.

"Katniss," I say, lifting my eyes so I can look at her. "I want you to love yourself before you love me."

"I already love you."

I press my lips to the top edge of her bellybutton, igniting a shiver from her, before travelling back up to her lips. I kiss her and then rest my forehead on hers. "I know," I tell her softly. "But, listen. I love you for everything you are."

She rolls her eyes and so I move back down to make my point. I press my lips to the skin of her stomach. "Every scar makes you who you are," I say. I move my lips to hover over a bit of skin that remains unblemished. "And I want you to love yourself as much as I love you."

I'm not the least bit surprised that, when I look up to see Katniss, she's staring at me as if she doesn't believe me. She takes everything with skepticism, even from me. It has come from years of building walls that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to tear down completely.

Instead, Katniss sighs and wraps her arms around my waist. She doesn't say anything. She just rests her head against my chest and I press a kiss into her hair. "I can wait, Katniss."

"You shouldn't have to," she says, her voice muffled by my chest.

I pull her away and kiss her. When I pull away, I rub my nose against hers. "I think of it more as anticipation instead of waiting." She looks down embarrassed, so I just rest my chin on the top of her head. "I want you to be ready and I don't care if I'm old and gray. If you'll have me then."

She kisses my chest over my heart for the third time. "I could live a thousand lifetimes and not deserve you."

I have to scoff at this. "I think you have it backwards," I mutter. She either didn't hear me or chooses to ignore it, keeping her head firm against my chest.

* * *

The months fly by due to midterms and workloads. I have all but rented the third booth to the left on the fourth floor of the library by the time I finally get a break in mid November. Thanksgiving is right around the corner and I'm more than ready for the break. I took off from volunteering the Tuesday before and Hersh has two classes, so we'll be home by mid-afternoon.

My inbox has become inundated with emails from the school. Junior year is typically when students study abroad or do external programs to other universities in the States, and _now_ is the time to look into it. To be honest, I hadn't even thought about it. Hersh, however, keeps asking me to check out the fairs with him. Some of the programs are even cheaper than tuition and financial aid carries over. It's drawing his attention, as well as Dalton and Mitchell and our other friends.

I've never really had the desire to leave though.

I rest my chin on Katniss's shoulder and skim the pages of her history book with her, watching as she shifts to highlight one of the lines. I just finished the last of my math homework, my writing considerably messier than usual considering Katniss is stationed on my lap and I only have the use of one of my arms. The bed isn't the best desk either, but the work is legible.

Now the only thing I have to do is finish my work for Professor Beetee's class that I'm planning to do later tonight. I've gotten to know him very well over the last few months. I've gone to his office hours to talk about the cases. He's an extremely intelligent man and he stutters considerably less when he's not in front of a lecture hall full of students. And he genuinely cares despite being a researcher.

I move Katniss's braid and kiss the back of her neck. When she stubbornly ignores me, I pull the collar down so I get at some skin that won't show and begin to tease it. She swats at my face as if I'm an irritating fly.

They say that slow and steady wins the race. I think they may be right. Every new inch that Katniss exposes to me is like hidden treasure. I've added her ribcage to my routine – palms, stomach, ribs. I haven't been brave enough to go any further up, not for lack of want, but because of what I know will come. During her treatment, Katniss received her chemotherapy and many of her other drugs through a central line, which is basically a port into her body. To insert it, the doctors had to make an incision just under her collarbone, and removing it required surgery as well. As a result, she'll have a scar there for the rest of her life. I've never seen it. Unlike the scars on her stomach, which are faded and nearly invisible, this one carries a much more powerful sting and she has steadfastly hidden it by clothing.

I've looked up 'port scars' online. There are tons of blogs out there that dedicate at least one of their entries to talking about them. It's a daily reminder, like the scars on her hands from graft-versus-host disease, of what she's been through. And I know that Katniss is insecure about it.

Katniss leans back into me more and rests her head on my shoulder. "Are you excited to go home?"

Am I? I suppose. It'll be great to see my dad and we're heading to Roanoke to spend the holiday with Rye and Lux so they can try their hand at a Thanksgiving dinner. Her parents are staying in South Carolina, so it'll just be us, which I prefer. I'd rather not spend the holiday listening to my mother complain about me to Lux's family. Katniss will be staying here. She said that Sae's cooking for them, since Haymitch threatened to order takeout and Prim complained, and the Hawthornes will probably make their way over at some point. She said that Hazelle likes to help Sae because it gives her something to do to keep her mind off things.

Katniss never told me, but Prim did. Gale passed away around this time of year, in the interval between Thanksgiving and Christmas the year prior to my meeting the Everdeens. The Hawthornes have always amazed me. They've remained a solid family unit despite having walked through Hell and back. I've gotten to know Rory better than any of them thanks to Prim and it astonishes me every day that they can still interact with the Everdeens when I know they see Gale in Katniss and her struggles.

I shake my head. "I'm not looking forward to that drive."

Katniss giggles. "You had fun last time," she says, turning to kiss my cheek. "You can _call me maybe_?"

"Ha. Ha. Ha," I deadpan, wrapping my arms around her stomach and rocking her in my arms. "Very punny. What are you and Prim planning on doing?"

She shrugs her shoulders. "She wants to go see the movie the day it comes out," she says. I chuckle. Prim has been dying for this movie to come out for months and Katniss finally finished the book. Plus, I'm ninety-nine percent sure Prim has a huge crush on Bradley Cooper. I've heard her and Rue talking about him way too much for my own personal sanity. "Other than that, I suppose not much. If you bring your laptop to Rye's, I'll Skype with you."

"Call it date."

She turns so her forehead is pressed into the crook of my neck. I can feel her smile.

* * *

Rye's house is in a brand new subdivision that is a far cry from the neighborhood we grew up in. It's new construction and the area isn't even really finished. My mother spent the last hour of our car ride telling my father about what a deal it was because, once the area is built up, the value will skyrocket. I'm pretty sure my father did the same thing I did: ignored her.

Although, I have to say, when we arrive I'm kind of awestruck.

It's not like it's the first time I've been here, but now that I'm not worrying about Katniss and there's no wedding celebration going on, it's easier to see the actual house. Now I can see why my mother jumped on the chance for them to serve dinner instead of us. I think she'd be embarrassed to have Lux come to Miner Falls.

Rye is still in a suit when he comes out to grab the bags. My mother fawns over him and how handsome he is. My father looks largely out of place next to him, his plaid flannel making him look more like a lumberjack than a baker. He's a proud man, proud of his roots in the Miner Falls area, and I'm not exactly sure what he's thinking. Actually, that's a lie. I know _exactly_ what he's thinking; he'll just never say it aloud. He's worried he'll lose Rye to all this fancy extravagance and Rye will look down on him as a simpleton.

But, I see him grin when Rye tells us he's going change quickly before showing us around and he comes back down in one of his old college t-shirts and a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee. My mother, on the other hand, visibly bites her tongue. I have to hold in a chuckle at her foul expression.

"Sorry, Peet," he says, chucking my bag into one of the rooms at the end of the second floor hallway. "You get the littlest room. Leaven's already called dibs the bigger one."

"Where is your brother?" Dad asks, walking out of the third of Rye and Lux's guest rooms. It's a four-bedroom house, which is two more bedrooms than our house has, and I had thought I'd be on a couch in the basement so I'm not going to complain.

"Lux's getting him from the airport on her way home from work," Rye says, leading us back down the stairs and into their kitchen. He grabs a beer out of the fridge to give my father and then goes to hand one to me until my mother gives him the worst look I've seen her direct at him in years. He smirks. "Sorry. Forgot you're still a baby."

My mother huffs and walks into the living room to check the progress they've been making and Rye rolls his eyes, launching himself up onto the counter. "How's school?" he asks me.

"It's good."

Rye laughs. "Okay, better question: how's Katniss?"

My father smiles and I can feel myself heating up. My cheeks are probably the color of the leaves outside – red. "She's doing really well," I say, unable to keep myself from smiling.

"There we go. We finally got a smile out of you," Rye says. Then he turns to my father. "How's the bakery?"

"Good. I've got Deacon Cartwright working with me after school." They talk for a little bit about the bakery, my mother's voice echoing as she wanders the house inspecting everything, and then my father brings up the topic of grandchildren.

"Dad, we just got married!" Rye exclaims. My father doesn't say anything, just looks at him expectantly. He's probably wanted grandchildren as long as he's wanted kids himself. "But, yeah, we've been talking about it. We get our MBAs at the end of next year, so we'll probably start trying sometime around then."

It's hard to imagine Rye with kids. In some ways, I think it makes it even harder because he's not in Miner Falls. I always imagined our family would just go on living there, but Rye has clearly moved on with his house and his job, and I'm not sure if we'll ever see Leaven again after he graduates. Out of the three of us, I think I might be the only one eager to stay.

I think about that all through the night. When everyone gets here, Rye and Lux take us to their favorite restaurant and then show us around. I can't really focus on anything. I just look out the window and wonder what's going to happen to me. I don't even really know what I want to do.

And then there's Katniss. I honestly don't see her leaving the capitol or surrounding area ever. That doesn't really bother me, since I don't have a large desire to leave the area either, but it doesn't stop me from worrying about what ifs. What if I get offered a job far away or go to graduate school somewhere else? What if I'm completely wrong and Katniss wants to move as far as her legs can take her? And, of course, the what ifs about Katniss moving spur the what ifs that induce my nightmares. What if she's not here when I make these decisions?

Katniss has her two-year checkup with Dr. Heavensbee coming up right after Thanksgiving. To say I'm terrified is an understatement. I've done a good job so far distracting myself with schoolwork and Katniss herself, but it doesn't make it any easier. I know I'm going to be a wreck all day until she comes back and tells me she's fine, no recurrence, because it's going to remind me of when she relapsed.

I'm sitting on the back deck while everyone sits around in the living room when Rye comes out and sits down next to me.

"What's on your mind?" he asks.

I just shake my head. "Anything and everything," I mutter. "I'm just overwhelmed, I guess. Everyone seems to know what they want to do and I don't even know what I want my major to be."

My brothers both knew what they wanted to do before they went to college. Rye was in charge of the books at the bakery and it triggered him to choose a career in business. Leaven, who always hated the early hours and tedious work of a baker, wanted something different and since he liked building things, he went into engineering. Then there's me, still clueless, and my mother reminds me of it every time she sees me.

Rye nods and looks over his shoulder. He stands and shuts the glass door over the screen to give us privacy and sits back down. "Forget about Mom for a minute," he says. "What do you enjoy?"

"What do you mean?"

He moves his chair a little. "Peeta, you have the biggest heart out of anyone I know, so just tell me what's in it. Forget about what Mom wants you to do for a minute and just talk to me." When I don't say anything, he smirks. "I'll start you off. Katniss is in there."

"She is," I say. I bite my lip and think for a moment. "I like to draw."

"And you're good at it," Rye says.

"But I can't make a career out of drawing!" I hiss.

Rye shakes his head. "Maybe, maybe not. But just keep going. You've been volunteering at PCH for years now. What do you like about it?"

"I like the interactions, I guess," I tell him. I think back over a few of my favorite kids. "I like helping people, making them feel better. I like working with the kids."

"There are plenty of career paths you can take to do those things," Rye says. "You just have to pick one that you see worthwhile. And, don't worry if you don't know, it'll come. Just pick a major that interests you. Think about the classes you've taken and the ones that you've liked."

I do think about it, even after Rye goes back into the house. My mother has been pushing the lawyer card for years. My father even told me I'd be good at it since he's convinced I have a golden tongue, but I just don't see it. I stay up way too late looking into careers and I come up with absolutely nothing. I toss and turn thinking about majors. I think about what I have the most credits in and decide to settle.

Rye and Lux have a hard time keeping my dad out of the kitchen and ultimately they end up letting him fix the potatoes. My mother sits and chatters with Lux while she's getting everything ready. Leaven and I play video games in the basement, but I tend to lose because I'm still distracted. It's all hitting me at once and I wish it had spread out over the year and a half I've been at school.

When we had Thanksgiving dinner at our house, Dad always insisted that we go around the table and say what we were thankful for. It became a sort of tradition, one that Rye apparently wants to keep for his future children. So we go around the table. Dad's thankful we're happy and healthy. Our mother is thankful that Rye and Lux are happy in their new life. Rye and Lux give similar sentiments as her and Leaven is thankful he only has half a semester of school left.

And then it's my turn. What am I thankful for? One year I was thankful for my knee surgery. The next year I was thankful that I had gotten to know Katniss and, that year, I was still terrified that she wasn't going to get better. The year after that I was thankful that Katniss was well and that I was enjoying school. I can't say I'm thankful that I know what I'm doing with my life. I can't say I'm thankful that Katniss is still well because I'm afraid to jinx her appointment. So, I say the only thing that's true, even though it's a bit of a cop out.

"I'm thankful that we're all here together."

* * *

Monday morning I skip class. I just can't do it. Hersh skips too to make sure I don't give myself an aneurism while I pace the floor, trying to convince myself that I'm overreacting. Everything will be fine.

I'm waiting for a phone call. I'm waiting for some sort of landslide to just come down on me. I've been happy for too long and now everything is just going to collapse around me. Prim called the last time. I pray that I won't see her face light up my screen. I bite my lip so hard I taste the metallic blood in my mouth.

The hours tick away and the nerves just get worse. I'm just about ready to get up and pace again when I hear the code get punched into our door. I turn to see if it's Dalt or Mitch. My heart just about explodes when I see Katniss.

I run over to her, take her in my arms and look down at her. "And?" I ask.

She smiles. "Perfect. Two years," she says.

I swing her around in my arms. Finally, something good – clear blood work and two years in remission. It's something to celebrate.

* * *

I decide to go talk to Professor Beetee about the concerns I told Rye. I figure that he might have a better idea than my brother as to what I should do about majors. Rye tried the whole soul searching thing and that didn't work. Professor Beetee seems like a practical man, so I'm hoping he'll help.

I walk Katniss to her class and then head to his office hours. His office is located in the farthest corner of the science building, up a winding flight of stairs, and basically looks like he's living on the edge of civilization. I knock on the door and he calls me in and my eyes take in everything on the wall. He's neat. He has a poster of the DNA double helix and different figurines scattered across the room. He has an entire bookshelf dedicated to ethics, be it religious or secular in nature, on the back wall.

He looks up from his desk and peers at me over his glasses. "Ah, Peeta! To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Can I talk to you about something unrelated to the class?" He nods his head and I sit down in the chair in front of him. "I know why you decided to go into the field of bioethics, but how did you make the decision to change career paths?"

He leans back in his chair and puts his hands behind his head. "How did I go from the technical aspects of medicine to the ethical aspects? Technically, I stepped down from my position at the company and then took to my studies, but I'm sure that's not what you came here to talk to me about." He smiles knowingly. "What's really on your mind?"

I shake my head. "I just don't know what I'm doing."

"Ah, yes. The question of many students," he says. "You do know that you don't have to know right now? You have your entire life to make these decisions. I changed career paths late in my life and both have been rewarding. It depends on what interests you."

"That's my problem. I don't know what interests me."

He eyes me for a minute and removes his hands from behind his head. "Oh, I think you do," he says. He sits up in his chair and leans over the desk toward me. "Peeta, I think you have a wonderful mind and right now you're trying to corner yourself into an easy option. What's your major?"

I shake my head. "Undecided for the next few weeks and then I have to declare something."

"Well, I can't give you a major," he chuckles.

"If you don't mind me asking, what did you get your undergraduate degree in?" I ask.

He points to the wall behind him and I squint to see it. _Georgetown University. John Michael Beetee. Bachelor of Science in Chemistry. _He smiles. "And look where I am, teaching a lecture on ethics."

I nod my head.

"Do you see what I mean, Peeta?" he continues. "Don't pick something because you think it's the _right_ major. By all means if you know you want to be a physician, then a biology degree may be where you need to look. But, don't settle."

"How would I be settling?" I ask.

"By picking a major because it looks good," he says. "You're an ambitious student and an incredible thinker. I want to see you challenged in whatever field you ultimately end up being in. It's minds like yours, ones that connect their lessons to their own lives and not just regurgitate the information for exams, that make me excited about being here. You have the gift of a conscientious mind and I think that the only way you can go wrong is to waste it."

"And by waste," I conclude, "you mean settle."

"Exactly," he says. "So, my opinion – take it as you want – is to go out there and major in a subject that excites you. And, I think, if you take a good look at what you do in your spare time, you'll see a pattern and that is where you should look."

It's a lot to take in and, to be completely honest, I think Professor Beetee thinks too highly of me. I thank him for his time and walk out possibly more confused than I had been going in there. He said similar things as Rye did. I sit outside Katniss's lecture hall and think about the things I do in my spare time. I volunteer at PCH twice a week now, sitting at the coloring table with Rue and helping the kids with their art. I read ethics based cases given to me by Professor Beetee because he thinks they'll interest me. Is he trying to tell me to be a doctor? As much as I respect Dr. Heavensbee, I don't think I could watch kids go through what Katniss did day after day, knowing some of them will be lucky like her and some won't. Being a nurse, like Prim wants to do, seems even worse because they're the ones that have the most patient contact.

I pull out my laptop and look at my degree audit. I've taken a few biology classes, a sociology class, a language. I finished my history core. I have my math credits out of the way and there is no way I'm being a math major. I look at the list of majors and then back at my audit and nod my head. It's beyond obvious that I've got an interest in biology, given the electives that I've taken. To keep myself sane, I email the biology department my major request form before I change my mind but I still don't know if it's what I want.

It would have been much easier if I had just stayed in Miner Falls and taken over the bakery.

* * *

The first days of December bring the last week of classes before study days and the ultimate loom of finals. Three of Katniss's classes have exams and she's basically locked herself in the library. She went home for the weekend with a backpack full of books. The fact that I haven't really seen her in a good week just makes me even more frustrated. I keep going back and forth about whether emailing the biology department my major request was the right decision or not. I can't decide what I want to do with my life. I can't even see my girlfriend and take all of these frustrations out on her beautiful mouth.

So, instead, I make lists. Endless lists. Lists of possible careers and what I need to do to get there. Hersh is calling it obsessive and tells me at least once a day that I need to relax.

Rue looks over at me from across the table and raises an eyebrow. I can't even draw. My lines aren't straight and everything just comes out wrong. I blow out a breath and try again. The kid next to me deserves a good picture.

I draw a mockingbird and hand it over to him. He smiles and grabs a red crayon, beginning with the feathers on the head. "That's really good," I say.

"Thanks!" he says, grinning with a missing tooth in front. He's a cute kid with blond hair and light eyes, kind of like a mix between me and Katniss – if I'll allow myself to think it. The poor kid's got some sort of braces on his legs. "You draw good."

"Thanks," I say. He struggles toward a blue crayon across the table so I grab it for him. He thanks me and then colors more.

I look up at Rue and she smiles. I lean back in my chair and fully appreciate what Rye and Professor Beetee were trying to tell me. There are a hundred and one things I can do with my life, but it is how I do them that is important. I don't want to sit behind a desk. I want to be engaged, get my hands dirty, and change something.

When I first started volunteering at PCH, way before I met Katniss, I told Portia I wanted to make a difference in someone's life. I'd like to think that I'm still making a difference in her life every day by being a part of it. She makes me want to be a better person. She was the first thing that Rye said was in my heart and he's right. My heart, my passion, my drive to be the person that Professor Beetee values so much comes from being with her and striving to be the man she needs. _That_ is what I need to apply to whatever major I have and whatever career I choose, that strive toward something better, not only for her but for everyone else like her.

Now, I just need to figure out how to apply it.

* * *

_The title comes from the poem _And Death Shall Have No Domination_ by Dylan Thomas. The song they sing in the truck from the wedding, and referenced later by Katniss, is _Call Me Maybe_ by Carly Rae Jepsen. Anyone familiar with the Roanoke area will recognize that the highway Peeta takes will bring them to WV. Although I will never say it, that's where I've always imagined Miner Falls to be located, so use that information as you wish. The book Prim wants Katniss to read is _The Silver Linings Playbook_ by Matthew Quick – the film stars Jennifer Lawrence. (Sorry, I just couldn't resist.) The scene where Katniss is called to the front of the class on the first day of school is taken from my own college experiences, watching my psychology professor do an experiment using someone in the front row who looked scared to death the entire time. Professor Beetee's class is based off my own experiences taking an ethics discussion and seminar. The case he gives Peeta's class on the first day is a real case out of our textbook. _

_Part I, as stated above, loosely parallels the milestone of completing school. I interpreted it as __Peeta getting his shit together and picking a major/figuring out what he's doing._

_Public Service Announcement: I am not condoning underage drinking. It is illegal. However it does happen on college campuses and, as wholesome as Peeta Mellark is, I wanted him to be human. Since he _is_ perfect in so many aspects already, I didn't want him to be some mega-God. Please, any underage readers, read these and any future sections with maturity. _

_And, again, I don't use a beta so all mistakes are mine. Please, constructive criticisms are greatly appreciated and reviews are always welcome. Thanks for reading!_


	2. Part II

_Thank you all for the ongoing support and I hope this lives up to the expectations._

* * *

Part II

_Yeah, we both carry baggage_

_We picked up on our way_

_So if you love me, do it gently_

_And I will do the same_

-Thompson Square, _Glass_

When I was younger, back before I came to appreciate the beauty of autumn, winter was my favorite season. When the storms came barreling through, dropping feet of snow along the Appalachian Mountains, school would cancel because the county roads would be slathered in thick sheets of ice, and snow would blanket the entire region. Our town was always extraordinarily blessed in terms of school cancellations. We only had a small elementary school before our students were shipped on buses to a regional middle and high school, and when the snow fell our teachers tended to turn a blind eye to the fact that every single kid that attended Miner Falls Elementary could walk there, and instead when the older kids stayed home we did as well.

Eventually, I grew out of snowball fights and war zones created in the streets. It was around the time that my mother insisted that Rye, Leaven, and I stick the plow on the front of the truck and dig out the roads, which wouldn't be done by the state. It took most of the day to go out and fix the roads, clearing out driveways, and – because we never listened to our mother – Rye insisted we would extend into the areas near the old mine, where the poorest of the poor lived. Our mother never knew, or she just didn't tell us if she did, and adding that section of town to our route added that much more work. By the time we got back, I almost always missed out on the snowball fights.

When I park my truck in front of the Abernathy-Everdeen abode, I realize I missed the snowball fight here too. Or, more accurately, it never even started.

Prim and Rory are building a snowman in the front yard, although Frosty has seen better days. It looks like the two high school sophomores have miscalculated the size of the three individual body balls and the bottom is too big to be proportional to the rest. But, if I know anything about Prim it's that she won't care and she'll see this as the best looking snowman this side of the city.

I hop out of my truck and walk over. Prim looks up from rolling the head and ditches Rory to greet me, her friend trying to get the sticky middle snowball on the body without breaking it.

Prim wraps her arms around me and I chuckle at her attire. We've got maybe half a foot on the ground, but she's decked head to toe. She's got on one of those puffy jackets in an abnormally bright purple with a pair of ski pants and heavy winter boots. Her hands are covered with mittens and she's got not only a hat but a matching scarf wrapped right over her mouth and nose so I can only see her blue eyes and her braids sticking out. I have no doubt in my mind that this is Haymitch's idea, considering Rory's standing by the snowman in jeans and a coat, with mittens and a hat but nothing to the extent of Prim's getup.

"You look like a purple marshmallow," I chuckle.

Prim rolls her eyes and pushes her scarf down so she can talk. "Haymitch doesn't want me to get sick."

She doesn't say why because it doesn't need to be said. Haymitch doesn't want Prim to get sick because if Prim gets sick Katniss will get sick and the last thing Katniss needs when she gets back to campus at the beginning of next week is to be hacking with a cough or burning with fever. She just got over something – the doctors seem to think it was a mild case of a strain of the flu that wasn't used to make this season's flu shots, which Katniss received immediately after they were made available. I haven't seen her since she's been recovering. Not only has the bakery been busy, but we all decided it would be in Katniss's best interest if she just rested until she was well again.

And, she's well now, so obviously I came running.

The door to their house opens and I look over Prim's head to see Katniss standing in the doorway. I go to sidestep Prim and make my way toward her, but before I can move, Katniss surprises me by walking out of the house and then, as if she can't stand it another second, starts running toward me. It all happens so fast, I don't even register it until after she's leaped into my arms and we've fallen backwards onto the ground, Katniss draped on top of me like a blanket.

"Man down!" Rory yells. Prim giggles.

Katniss presses her lips to mine in a chaste kiss. I tug on her braid and she shivers. She's not dressed for this weather. "What was that?" I ask.

She grins despite her teeth chattering. "It's been a long time."

"Then you can't give me a halfhearted kiss," I joke.

She takes that as an invitation to dip her head down to mine again, capturing my lips and making us both forget about the cold. The fire rages just below my skin, my heart beating one too many times every second. I wrap my hand around her neck, warming my bare fingers in the base of her hair, and she snakes her own under my hat. Her mouth becomes my own personal furnace, keeping me warm and burning despite the chill.

"Sweetheart, get in this house or put a goddamn coat on," Haymitch yells. Katniss looks up, breaking away from me to glare at her guardian. He raises his arms in exasperation. "And I don't want to see that in my front yard!"

Katniss rolls her eyes and stands up. I jump to my feet beside her and she tucks her arm through the crook of mine. She pulls us along toward the house, blatantly ignoring Prim's continuous giggling and Rory's wolf whistles. She drags me into the house and passed Haymitch, pulling me into the living room so we can sit on the couch.

She kicks off her dark brown UGGs and tucks her feet up under her. This action makes me admire her outfit. There's nothing really unusual about it. Katniss has never been particularly girly and chooses her clothes more for comfort than anything else, which means she lives in jeans and leggings and shirts that cover her scars. Today is no exception. She has on a pair of leggings with warm wool socks on her feet and the neckline of the black long-sleeved t-shirt goes right up to trace her neck. However, there is something different about what she's wearing over her black shirt and that's what I recognize more than any of the other bits. The unbuttoned flannel shirt that she's wearing is mine.

I was wondering where that went.

"I like your shirt," I say, taking a handful of the fabric in my hand. "When did you steal it?"

She smiles and looks up. I can hear Haymitch in the kitchen, which means he can hear us too even though there's a wall between us. Haymitch likes me and I don't particularly care to ruin that. He tries to give us privacy, but he has rules. No going to hang out upstairs alone. No kissing in front of him. (Although, I think he knows Katniss sleeps in my bed at school. Prim knows and I just can't see her being able to keep her mouth shut. But, he doesn't say anything about that so maybe he's trying to be in denial.) I understand the rules completely. He's trying to protect Katniss from the one thing he can protect her from – getting hurt by me, even though I'd never in a million years do it on purpose. But, years of watching her suffer from things he has no control over have made him cautious with everything she does.

And, of course, Katniss just wouldn't be Katniss if she actually listened to Haymitch.

She smirks and crawls across the couch to sit on my lap, wrapping her arms around my neck. "I took it during finals," she says, craning her head so she can kiss the underside of my jaw. "I didn't think you'd mind."

I shrug. "It looks better on you anyway."

She chews on her bottom lip as she smiles. "So," she says. "What do you want to do?"

There is a pile of forgotten board games in the corner of the room, no doubt Haymitch's attempts to keep both Katniss and Prim occupied on something other than the boy they're hanging out with. But, Prim's fine. I believe her when she says that she and Rory are just friends. And I think Haymitch does too. He's really worried about his little evil mastermind, Katniss Everdeen.

Katniss pulls my head down and starts to kiss me.

I guess he's worried about her for good reason. This is the girl that he's watched nearly die three times, two of those times as her legal guardian. Their family might have a different structure than most, but Haymitch plays the part of the doting father well. When Katniss and I first started dating he strategically placed his bows around the house and his prized hunting rifle was on display in the den.

He certainly made his point. He can send me to death with a snap of his fingers.

However, I completely forget about Haymitch when Katniss decides she wants to attempt to touch my tonsils.

My friends have asked me more times than they should about how I've developed such good patience. They don't understand how I could be with Katniss for a year and a half – having known her for years before – and not slept with her yet. I'll admit that I haven't kept the purest thoughts nor am I completely content with the pace of our relationship. I'm almost twenty and have hormones that make me crazy, but I understand that everything with Katniss takes time. It took me months to become friends with her, over a year for her to date me, and this is an even bigger step. And, if I'm being completely honest, as much as I'm bursting with anticipation, I'm scared because I don't want to hurt her and I know I will. I don't need to be a biology major to know that what we're building toward won't be particularly pleasant for Katniss.

I like where we are now. It's safe. We know exactly what we're doing. And, no, Dalton, it's not monotonous because I feel like I'm rediscovering every inch of Katniss all over again each time we do this.

Katniss moves her hands from my hair and puts them back on my body near my abdomen, snaking her hands up under my shirt. The fact that Haymitch is in the next room is both exhilarating and terrifying, knowing that any second now he could walk in and shoot me right in the eye if he wanted. But, the hunger in my stomach overcomes all of that and my hands, which are resting on Katniss's hips, slip under her shirt so I can feel the burning skin of her back.

I lose all track of time, but when we pull apart I feel like I've run a marathon and probably sound like it too. Katniss's cheeks are red and her pupils are dilated as she rests her forehead against mine.

"I missed you," she says.

The goofy grin that spreads over my face can't be helped. My hand reaches forward to rest on her cheek. "I love you."

She smiles. "I love you too."

"Yeah?" I ask, raising my eyebrows in mock surprise.

She nods her head against mine and her mouth forms the word, "yeah," but no words escape her lips. The smile on her face only brightens.

* * *

Portia pulls me aside on Thursday and asks me if I'd be interested in trying something new once a week. I tried my hardest to schedule my classes for second semester around my schedule at PCH, but I wasn't entirely successful. I was going for Tuesdays and Thursdays, but my organic chemistry lab conflicted with my usual Thursday time slot, so I told Portia I could come in earlier or just on Tuesdays to sit at the coloring table.

"So, I was thinking about having you do some sort of art class," she says, opening the door to a room across from the reading room. It looks like a small high school classroom with a few tables and desks. "Nothing too fancy. Just something for the older kids to do, especially the ones who are too weak to play in the rec area."

I nod my head. Portia has been contemplating this idea for a while. Her volunteer program caters mostly to the younger kids, but there are plenty of teenagers that use PCH's services as well and you won't catch many of them crowding the coloring table or sitting in the reading room. The ones who can play in the rec area will kick soccer ball pillows into a goal painted on a wall and the ones who can't usually stay in their rooms on laptops or watching televisions. There's also a tiny computer lab for the teenagers, but it's almost always full.

"Yeah, that would fun," I say.

Portia smiles. "Great. So, whatever time works for you on Thursdays and I'll be sure to tell the kids. I think they're really going to love it."

When I sit back down at the coloring table, one of the little girls climbs back onto my lap. Rue giggles. "So, are you leaving me for something better?" she asks.

To be honest, one of the best things about volunteering has been being able to get to know Rue and Prim. Obvious, I now know Prim extraordinarily well through Katniss, but it's been amazing to watch the two of them grow up. They're almost sixteen now, a far cry from the twelve-year-olds conniving to get me together with Prim's older sister and creating Mission Befriend Katniss, which didn't work but is funny to look back on anyway. In this aspect, I'm glad Portia still wants me at the coloring table on Tuesdays. It would be weird to only see Rue when she's hanging out at the house with Prim.

"Well, kind of," I tease.

The tiny patient on my lap looks up at me with the biggest blue eyes I've ever seen. I touch her nose with my finger and she giggles. She can't be more than five or six and her nurse is standing off to the side with her panicked mother. She's a new diagnosis and her mother looks terrified not having her within her grasp, but Octavia knows me better than most since she was one of Katniss's regulars and it looks like she's calming the mother down quite a bit.

Rue glares mockingly and I look up from the little girl. "Just on Thursdays," I tell her. "Portia is having me do something for the older kids."

"Look at you. Moving up in the world," Rue teases. She wiggles her eyebrows and I can't help but laugh. Rue reminds me of Hersh in some ways, always teasing but with such a big heart. "You excited to go back to school?"

I grunt and Rue laughs, throwing her head back. The boy beside her looks up and starts to mimic her, making her laugh harder. I just roll my eyes and look down at the picture that the little girl is drawing. It's a cat, I think. Or possibly a rabbit because the ears are pretty long.

"You're going to miss me on Thursdays," Rue says with a smirk.

I shake my head. "You know it."

* * *

We move back in on the twenty-first of January, since classes start back up the day after the federal holiday. I don't have much new stuff, just a box of books for my new classes and a duffle bag, everything else I just left in the dorm over break. Since Katniss doesn't have class until eleven on Tuesdays, she spends one more night at home before the semester starts.

The way our schedules go means I won't see her until after I get back from volunteering. We agree to meet at the dining hall to catch dinner and I spend a good chunk of my time at the coloring table looking at my watch. Rue laughs at me and I have to admit that it's a little ridiculous. But I haven't seen Katniss in a week. That's a long time.

She's waiting for me in front of the dining hall and, when I get close enough, she holds her hand out for me to take. She's shivering from the cold and I pull her into the building before starting up conversation.

"You weren't out there long, right?"

Katniss shakes her head as we walk inside the double doors that lead from the lobby to the dining hall. It's loud and busy, but warm and inviting. "No, I got here right before you," she says. "It's just cold."

"Well, I know a few ways to warm up," I tease, raising my eyebrows in her direction. Her cheeks flame red and her eyes widen. I just laugh and pull her into me so I can press my lips to her temple. "I'm kidding."

When she steps back, there's an odd flustered look about her, teased with an air of disappointment. I bite my tongue and immediately wish I hadn't joked with her. I've spent too much of my time in the last month with Hersh. Now, I've overstepped the boundary with Katniss.

She smiles shyly and grabs my hand, pulling me toward the food lines. It's busy and loud, so we don't talk as we grab our meals. My eyes watch her closely, trying to judge how far I've overstepped. She isn't standing quite as tall as she should, her shoulders slumped, and her boots are more interesting to her than anything else in the area. She stands like this a lot, so it's not too suspicious and I wonder if maybe she's already over it.

But, after we swipe our meal cards at the register and grab a booth in the corner, I know she hasn't. She slides all the way in, basically hugging the wall, and curls in upon herself while she eats. All my attempts at small talk get single word answers or simple head nods and the majority of our meal is in silence.

I want to talk to her and apologize, but starting that conversation in the middle of the dining hall isn't the best idea. So, on our way back to the dorms, I decide to bypass Lime and head straight to Poplar. The guys aren't there and the suite is dark when we arrive. I know Hersh is working on his study abroad application in the library. He has a meeting tomorrow with one of the coordinators and he wanted to have most of it finished before he went. Mitchell eats dinner with his ROTC friends most nights and Dalton...I never know where he is. My guess is that he's with some girl.

I shut the door behind me and Katniss makes herself comfortable on my bed, sitting on the edge with her legs slightly parted. I go to stand in between them, preparing my apology in my head the entire walk across the room, and take her hands in mine. _I'm sorry I made you uncomfortable. I fully understand that you aren't for crude jokes like that being made in public. I lost my head. I'm sor– _

I am kissing Katniss Everdeen and I am really confused.

Usually, kissing Katniss is the least confusing thing I can do. It's a fairly simple and quite enjoyable activity and a way for my head to relax. It's more about feeling than thinking. But I was so sure she was mad at me.

Katniss unzips my Carhartt and pushes it off my shoulders without releasing my lips. It falls in a heap on the floor, pooling at my feet. For a minute, my mind completely forgets everything. What was I apologizing for? Apparently nothing. When she pulls back to take a breath, I jump up onto the bed myself and push her into the mattress. She giggles and takes my face in her hands as I go to unbutton her coat.

I don't even get her arms out before she's reaching for the hem of my shirt. That's when my brain starts working again. There is something wrong with this situation. It isn't that she wants me shirtless – Katniss usually takes it off when we make out – it's something else. The speed. We're going quicker than we've ever gone. My shirt ends up on the floor with my winter jacket and, before I can even start to slow us down, Katniss reaches for my belt and I spring backwards.

"Wait, wait, wait," I say.

Katniss sinks into the bed, if that's even possible. She closes her eyes and when she opens them they're glassy. My whole body tenses. I do the first thing that comes to me – I sweep her up in my arms and sit with my back against the wall. I'm surprised and, not going to lie, a little hurt when she pushes off me instead of pressing into me like usual.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

She doesn't look at me but I can hear her sniffle. "Why don't you want me?"

_What?_

I turn her face so I can look into her eyes. She's blinking fiercely in an attempt not to cry and will look at anything other than me. What Katniss asked isn't even connecting in my head. How can she think that I don't want her? That's just not possible.

"Why would you think that?" I ask.

She finally glances up at me, giving me a look of disbelief. "You keep pushing me away," she says, as if it's common knowledge.

We stare at each other. It is true. Katniss has attempted this in the past and I've shielded her from it. She's not ready for the emotional baggage that comes with these forms of physical intimacy. If she can't even talk to me about the scars she won't show me, how can I be comfortable letting her push farther and farther until she reaches her breaking point? I don't want her to get hurt and, if she goes too far, I'm sure that's what will happen. But, she's stubborn and I should have known that she'd keep pushing.

I open my mouth, but she beats me to it.

"You're so good to me," she says. She's lost some of the confidence she had earlier and now she talks with a smaller voice and an ounce of a quiver. "You're patient and kind and...I just want to do something for you."

"Katniss – "

"No," she interrupts. "I – "

"Katniss, listen to me," I say. She closes her mouth and looks at me with her lips in a thin line. "This isn't just about making one of us feel good or about paying a debt or whatever. I want you, but _that_ is not what I want."

She frowns, so I continue. "You don't understand how much you mean to me."

"Yes, I do," she says, her voice high and squeaky. I wince. That wasn't the right thing to say. I'm putting doubt into our relationship and that's the last thing I want to do.

I shake my hands and start over. "Scratch that. We're equals, right? Partners?" She nods her head. "So, we do things together."

"I'm not following where this is going."

I grin and use my fingers to walk up her arms, which are covered with fabric. "We're going to go at your pace. You can set it, but I want you comfortable at all times." She rolls her eyes and I raise an eyebrow at her. "What?"

She falls backwards so she lands on her jacket, her head crashing against my pillow. I follow her, flopping down on my stomach next to her so our faces are a few inches apart.

"What?" I ask again.

Katniss shakes her head and her face burns crimson. "I just...I read Prim's magazine and it didn't warn me that you'd say no."

"Prim's magazine, eh?"

If possible, Katniss's face brightens. But, her eyes narrow, so I'm sure it's not entirely embarrassment anymore. "I know! I asked her why she had it. She's fifteen! She doesn't need to know about...that."

I decide not to remind Katniss that Prim is almost sixteen and, having dealt with Delly at that age, I know those magazines are more for curiosity and saying they have them, at least for girls like Prim. I don't think Prim's out there fooling around with every guy at school. So, instead, I say, "I wish I'd seen you reading it, though. You were probably the color of an eggplant when you saw the diagrams."

She glares at my teasing for a minute and, when I stop chuckling, she bites her bottom lip.

"Have you ever...?"

I wait for her to elaborate, but it never comes. She just looks at me with wide eyes. I know what she's asking. I just want to know if she'll say it. "Have I had sex?" I clarify. Her cheeks tinge again and I shake my head slightly. "Katniss, it's a normal instinctual activity and if humans didn't act upon it, our species would die out. It's not something to be embarrassed about."

"Well," Katniss says. "Have you?"

We've never talked about this before and that's my fault. I've stayed clear of conversations like these because I didn't want Katniss to feel pressured into anything she didn't want to do. But, now it's Katniss bringing it up and, after the conversation we've just had, I can only stall for so long.

I shake my head. "No, I haven't."

Katniss looks shocked. I don't know how I should feel about that. "Really?" she asks.

My spit gets caught in my throat. "Katniss, I met you when I was sixteen and I haven't dated anyone between then and you." I shrug. "Call me old fashioned, but I actually wanted it to mean something to me and I didn't find love when I was fifteen."

A small smile tugs at the corners of her lips. "Do I mean _something_ to you?" she asks, batting her eyelashes because she knows the answer.

I move my arm so I'm hovering over her. My lips drop down on hers in a chaste kiss before I pull away and pretend to think for a minute, furrowing my brow and pursing my lips in thought. "Hmm, you know – "

"Peeta!" she squeals. The smile on her face, which has now spread across her cheeks, tells me that she knows my game.

My lips find the corners of her mouth before I lean down to whisper in her ear. "You mean _everything_ to me."

Her lips suck in the skin of my neck that's stretched in front of her mouth. I hiss as she finds a particularly sensitive spot, her fingers scraping against the skin of my abdomen. They slide lower on my stomach until she's carefully, with just an index finger, touching the waist of my jeans. My body gives an involuntary shiver.

After we've lost our breaths, our pupils dilated, our skin warm to the touch, we curl up together just staring at each other. Katniss grabs my hand and plays with my fingers in between our bodies. She uses her fingers to trace the nails, the knuckles, and then the lines of my palms, ending with the beginnings of the veins that run up my arms and carry blood back to my heart.

* * *

There are two boys that come to the first art lesson. Not knowing really what was going to happen, I decided to just have them do water colors. The next Thursday, one of the boys from the first week comes and I notice a few kids with their faces pressed to the window, trying to see what's going on. They stick their noses in the window the next week too. I open the door and tell them that they're all free to come in and the group looks back and forth, as if trying to decide.

Ultimately, they come inside.

Nyx and Nova Leeg are identical twins that lead the other girls inside. The group sits down at a table and smiles while I pass them a piece of paper each. I can barely tell the Leeg girls apart. One, Nyx, has amber flecks to her eyes, while Nova's eyes are just brown. It's still hard to tell and it doesn't help that their names are similar as well.

The boy who came both weeks tells me to call him Homes. He's thirteen and quiet and sticks to himself mostly. When the Leeg girls come, he eyes them, listening to their high pitch chatter, and rolls his eyes. He actually listens to my instructions and I think he wants to get better, whereas I'm pretty sure the girls that came in aren't here to paint.

"What do you think, Peeta?" one of the twins says, putting her hand in the air when I stand up from my crouch beside Homes.

I'd say the twins and their friends are about Prim's age, maybe a year or so older. Unlike Homes, who is clearly going through a round of chemotherapy, I wasn't entirely sure what ails them until they told me they have a genetic metabolic disorder. The twin that called me over shows me her picture of a lake and I nod in approval. Her sister glares at her and then raises her hand.

"Peeta, what about mine?" she asks, batting her eyelashes.

She has painted something similar to her sister's painting. It looks like a beach of some sort. "It's great, N..." _Shit, which twin is this?_

The girl smiles. "Nyx."

"It's great, Nyx."

Both girls look thoroughly pleased with themselves. I look down at the painting the girl beside them did. She's painted a rainbow with what looks like a pot of gold at the end. I'm about to comment on it when the door opens and a pair of boys stands in the doorway. The two look alike, with sandy hair and blue eyes, both with bulky builds. The taller one has patches of missing hair, reminding me of Katniss after chemo, and an incision scar on the back of his head. He looks like he might be in middle school, maybe a freshman at the oldest.

His brother, however, looks younger. He has different facial features as well. His nose bridge is flat and his eyes are slightly slanted. His sandy hair is chopped short, making his ears stand out. They're low-set compared to his brother's. I bite the inside of my cheek as I walk over.

I smile kindly at both of them. "Hey, I'm Peeta."

"I'm Castor," the older one says. He puts his hand on his brother's shoulder. "This is my brother, Pollux."

When I turn toward him, Pollux ducks into Castor's arm and shakes his head. Castor turns to his brother. "Pol, can you say hi to Peeta?"

Pollux lifts his head and gives me a shy smile, but doesn't say anything. I grin and hold out a brush. "We're just painting today. Go crazy, guys."

Castor thanks me and Pollux follows him to a chair near the back. I hand them their paper and supplies before turning back toward the group. I'm about to go back to Homes when one of the twins start to giggle and the other raises her hand.

"Peeta?" she asks. "Are you coming next week?"

I nod. "I'll be here every Thursday. Why?"

The twins burst into giggles and the girl beside them, the one painting the rainbow, rolls her eyes. "It's Valentine's Day," she says. Then, she eyes her friends and turns to me. "Do you have a girlfriend, Peeta?"

Nyx and Nova stop giggling to look up at me expectantly. I nod and for a split second the two let their faces drop before their heads shake almost in unison. At the same time, the two open their mouths.

"What's her name?"

"What does she look like?"

I pull my phone out of my pocket and go through my pictures until I find a good one where she's not trying to hide from the camera. I hand it to the girls and all three of them crowd the phone. "That's Katniss," I tell them as they look.

"Katniss?" one of the twins repeats. I nod.

"She's really pretty," the other one says, almost sounding disappointed.

I look down at the picture of the rainbow that the girl beside the twins has pushed to the side. She's written her name on the bottom and I sneak a peak. Sloane Jackson. She even signed it in cursive, like an artist. I smirk and look up when the three girls continue to ask me questions.

"How long have you guys been together?" Sloane asks.

"A year and eight months," I say without counting. I don't need to count. It'll be two years in June.

It turns into twenty questions. Nyx, Nova, and Sloane all keep asking about our relationship as I move back and forth between Homes, Castor, and Pollux. They ask me about how we met, what I'm doing for her for Valentine's Day, if I think I'm going to marry her.

I don't know what to say for that one. Katniss and I haven't talked about marriage since we've gotten together, so I don't know if her views on it have changed. I like where we are now. I don't care to ruin what we have by prying into the future. She takes things one day at a time and I respect that.

But, it doesn't stop me from answering. "I'd like to marry her one day."

"Aww, that's so sweet," one of the twins says. "She's a lucky girl."

I turn away and look down at Castor and Pollux. Castor is actually a decent watercolor painter. He's done a landscape that looks incredibly real. Pollux drew a stick figure and painted the background around it with varying blobs of color.

"Those are really good, guys," I say. Castor grins and looks down at Pollux, who is looking into his lap, so I look down at the stick figure. "Is that you, Pollux?"

He shakes his head rapidly and points to his brother, but doesn't say anything again. "That's really cool," I tell him. He looks up from his lap and widens his small eyes at me. "I draw my brothers too, but my drawings aren't nearly as good as yours."

Pollux looks to Castor with a bashful expression and Castor pats his head. "See, Pol, I told you it was good! Can you say thank you?"

Nothing comes out of his mouth, but Pollux does turn to me and makes a sort of head nod. I smile. Aside from the kids at PCH, I've never dealt with any kids with disorders and disabilities. Between Katniss and my time volunteering, that's been completely flipped. I've learned all about different types of cancer and other afflictions that plague the kids here, but I'm stumped as to Pollux. I'm not sure if he's shy or if he's ill as well.

The door of the classroom opens and Portia walks in, smiling around at the group. "Okay, guys, it's time for Peeta to go home," she says. "We've taken enough of his time already."

For the first time since I've been here, I look down at my watch. I've been here almost a half-hour longer than I was supposed to be. The kids all make a noise of dissent and I feel my eyebrows rise to my hairline. They actually enjoyed being here, just as I did, and they don't want me to go.

"Don't worry. I'll be here next week," I tell them, turning to the Leeg girls and Sloane. "And we'll do something Valentine's themed, okay?"

The three girls look at me like it's Christmas morning and leave giggling, heads bowed and talking quietly. Homes snakes out behind them, sliding across the floors in his socks. Castor stands and takes his painting to the back table where I'd been drying the stuff the kids made. Pollux, however, doesn't follow him. I watch as Castor taps his shoulder.

"Time to go, Pol."

Pollux shakes his head and goes back to his drawing. Castor rolls his eyes and sighs. "Come on, Pollux. We'll come again next week." He goes to take the painting and Pollux makes a sort of hissing scream, swatting at his brother's arm.

It's not my place to intervene, especially considering Portia isn't and she's the boss, but I go over anyway. I kneel in front of the table and look Pollux in the eye. "Hey, I'll save you a spot next week," I say. "Tell me which seat you want."

Pollux looks at me and then slams his hand, palm down, on the table in front of him.

"Okay, this is Pollux's seat, then," I tell him. "I'll make sure no one sits in it."

"Come on, Pollux," Castor says, finally taking the painting out of his brother's hands. "Peeta will be here next week and you can paint more."

Once the two of them leave, I realize Portia is still in the room. She's leaning against the back wall, her arms crossed around her, and she's smiling at me. I walk over after I've cleaned up the tables with a cloth. If I had realized she was waiting for me, I would have cleaned afterwards.

"So, how do you like it?" she asks as she shuts out the lights.

"It's a lot of fun," I tell her. "I enjoyed getting to know the kids."

Portia smiles. "You certainly did look like you were in your element. You did well with Pollux just now."

I frown and look at her in question. What was I supposed to do with Pollux? Was it some sort of test? I just figured he was like everyone else and I should treat him as such. "What do you mean?" I ask.

"Castor is actually our patient, not Pollux," she says. "He's just smitten with his older brother, follows the boy everywhere and he's just a sweetheart, as I'm sure you realized. I just...I guess I wanted to make sure you were aware that he has Down syndrome so you wouldn't say anything. I'm not saying that you would, but I can never be sure with the volunteers about the words they use around the kids."

She says it very ambiguously and in a roundabout way, but I understand what she's getting at. My mother, and most of Miner Falls actually, uses the word _retarded_ as a common insult. It wasn't until I was in middle school, and I'd said it around my father while Hersh and I were fooling around the bakery, that I realized it was offensive. Of course, my father just didn't like me using any insults at all and that's why it bothered him. I can only imagine what it would do to Castor or Pollux to hear the word slip out of someone's mouth.

I've never met anyone with Down syndrome before and the closest I've gotten to it have been watching the seasons of Glee with Katniss, and Prim on occasion when we're at their home on a rainy day with nothing but a DVD player. I wait for Portia to say more – tell me how to act, what I should say, what I should do – but we just walk down the hallway in silence for a minute. I don't really know what else to say.

Portia turns to me at the end of the hallway and chuckles under her breath. "I didn't mean to make you nervous," she says.

"It's...I just...I've never met anyone like that before," I tell her.

She shakes her head and puts a hand on my forearm. "Well, there's nothing to be scared of. You did just fine," she says.

I nod. I don't know why it's suddenly terrifying now that I know. It's not like the Katniss and her cancer type of terrifying either. It's more like I don't want to mess up. I don't want to say something and become just another volunteer that makes Pollux uncomfortable. I want him, as well as everyone else in my class, to have fun. No matter who they are, what they have, or how many chromosomes they inherited.

* * *

Katniss isn't extraordinarily romantic. She doesn't do roses and heart-shaped boxes of candy fall flat for her. My girlfriend, on a holiday such as Valentine's Day, would much rather receive something more personal than something I could pick up from the store. In fact, she'd rather me not buy anything at all and just curl up with her somewhere. I'm not even taking her out to dinner, but instead I'm picking up food from Mags' diner and I've kicked Hersh, Dalton, and Mitchell out of the room for a good few hours so we could have the place to ourselves.

"What are you drawing, Peeta?"

I have the kids cutting out hearts from construction paper and tying them to string. It was actually Portia's idea, not mine. The hospital has a special Valentine's Day get together, where the kids all have boxes and the nurses stuff notes and candies into them (if the kids can have it). The strings of hearts will be lining the hallways as the kids who are healthy enough to go to the rec room will bring their boxes down there.

I look down at my half-drawn sketch of Katniss and Prim. I guess it's a tradition for me to give Katniss some sort of drawing for major holidays, such as her birthday, Christmas, and Valentine's Day. I'm sure she'll protest – because I'm paying for dinner on top of it and she demanded that our gifts to each other would be our time – but I like drawing them. It soothes me.

"It's just a little something extra to give to Katniss tonight," I say, looking over my shoulder. I'm not sure which one of the Leeg girls it is standing behind me, but she's looking at my work with a critical eye.

"Uh oh," Sloane says with a smile. "Peeta didn't finish his gift."

Across the room, Homes rolls his eyes. "I'm sure Peeta's just going above and beyond."

I look up at the twin over my shoulder – it's Nova, I can tell by the eyes – and she nudges my shoulder. "Are you going to propose?"

"W-what?" I stutter. "I'm not that much older than you. I'm not getting married any time soon."

Nyx, at her seat beside Sloane, smirks. "When's your birthday, Peeta?"

"March fourteenth," I tell her. None of them laugh like the kids at school used to because they don't get the joke. People always got a kick out of the fact that I was born on Pi Day and my father owned the bakery. "Why?"

She widens her eyes to look innocent. "No reason."

"Now, how is that string of hearts coming?" I ask her, pretending to be stern.

"Ours is almost done!" Castor says, raising his end in the air. Pollux nods his head and flashes a smile. I smile back.

The kids go back to their tasks, chatting with each other, and I look back at the drawing. I just can't get it. Prim's nose won't come out right or Katniss's eyes won't look like they're shining. After I rip the paper with my eraser, I take it as a sign that there will be no drawing for Valentine's Day. This is the first one we'll actually be celebrating. Last year, I had midterms the day after and Katniss had only called me for a brief few minutes not wanting to bother me, and the year before that we weren't together. I want this one to be perfect.

Of course, Katniss won't care either way. Like I said, she's not really into the cheesy romanticism and consumerism that surrounds the holiday.

On their way out, the kids wish me "Happy Valentine's Day" and then Nova winks and says, "I hope she says yes!" I just roll my eyes. She's definitely a jokester, whereas her sister is more willing to ask about me rather than about my life or Katniss. I grab the food on my way to the dorm and head back to Poplar to change quickly and get everything set up, but when I arrive the lights are on. Dalton's an environmental science major and he's a nitpick about shutting the lights off when we leave. I set the bag on the table and walk into my room, turning on the light.

Katniss looks up from my computer and smiles. "Hi!"

"How did you get in?" I ask. I know how she got in – that's a stupid question. She knows the code to our room and she either came before the rest of the boys left or she just wandered in when someone opened the main door to Poplar. It's really not that hard for her to get in the building.

"No '_Hi, Katniss, how was your day?'_ huh?" she teases, shutting the screen and smiling at me. "It was fine, by the way."

"I didn't get anything ready," I complain. "The place is a mess."

She shrugs. "I know, that's why I came early," she says. I walk to the bed and lean between her legs. She rests her head on mine and rubs our noses together. "I didn't want you to go to great lengths which – let's face it, Mellark – you were going to do. I don't care about fancy places or if Hersh's drawers are shut. I just want to be with you."

"You're like a dog," I joke. "I can do anything and please you."

She scowls and it makes me laugh. "Not quite anything," she says.

"Well, what can I do?"

Her scowl dissipates. "Kiss me," she demands.

I don't have to be asked twice. I take her lips in mine, slowly satiating a hunger of a different kind than the one that will be satisfied by the food in the common room. We break our kiss long enough for me to hop up onto the bed, but instead of allowing me to crawl on top of her, Katniss pushes me down, straddling my hips with her legs and putting her arms on either side of my head. She sucks on my bottom lip for a minute before feathering my jaw with kisses and then leaving a trail down my neck. Her hands sneak under my shirt and push it up to my chin and her mouth goes back up to mine. My hands, which are positioned on her waist, draw circles in her sides until it's just too much and I pull her down to me.

Katniss collapses into me, positioning herself so she's comfortably laying against me. She kisses my neck and then moves her hand back to cover mine. I stop drawing on her skin, stilling the movements of my fingers thinking it's annoying her, but then she pulls my hand across her back and rests it on the bare flesh under her shirt. She keeps harassing my neck, which makes me throw my head back so I can't see and she takes my other hand, pulling it back to slide my fingers into the back pocket of her jeans.

All blood flow to my brain halts as it heads elsewhere. My heart makes a few crazed beats that I'm sure will need to be shocked back to normal. I look into her eyes to see that, even those she's shaking in my arms, she's grinning like a Cheshire cat. I know that we've talked about this, about moving forward, but I still want to make sure she's comfortable, so I open my mouth to ask her but she cuts me off.

"It's okay," she says, bringing her hands up to cup my face.

"Really?" She nods, but she's still shaking. "Then why are you trembling?"

"I'm just nervous. It's not like we're doing anything, but...you're still the only guy I've ever wanted to...you know," she says softly. She screws her face into a scowl, as if she's disappointed in herself, and then she stares at me pointedly. "Now kiss me again. I've been thinking about it all day."

"Demanding," I tease.

She rolls her eyes and presses her lips to mine impatiently. The hand on her back runs up to unbraid her hair, my fingers running through the tresses. I wish I could major in pleasing Katniss Everdeen, because I could do this every hour of every day for the rest of my life.

But, when we come up for air, I gently push her off me. She whines in disapproval. "The food's getting cold," I tell her. "And we need to eat."

"But, I don't want to eat," she says, crawling back on top of me. She wraps her arms around my neck, keeping her legs on either side of me. "I want to stay right here."

"Okay, let me rephrase that," I say, tugging at the loose strands of hair around her shoulders. Her face nuzzles my neck. "_You_ need to eat or Haymitch is going to kick my ass."

She doesn't move, so I slide off the bed holding onto her. She wraps her legs around my waist so I have to carry her into the common room. I sit in my chair and she still won't let go. The thing is I don't want her to. Ever.

* * *

The rest of my February is destroyed by midterms. While the majority of my friends are off writing papers, I'm studying for exams – the life of a science major, I guess. I barely have time to see Katniss and I spend more time in the library than should be physically possible. The Friday before spring break I have three midterms. The night before Hersh brings me dinner in the library and, to be completely honest, that's the first time I'd seen him since Sunday.

I'm so exhausted by break that I just want to curl up in my bed and never get out. Hersh and I decide to leave on Saturday morning, mostly because he wants me to sleep before I drive home. When I get out of my last exam, I trudge back to Poplar through the nearly empty campus. Katniss is sitting at the table with Hersh when I get there and she guides me to my bed, wordlessly wrapping me in her arms and stroking my hair until I drift off. It doesn't take long and I don't wake up until it's time to drop Katniss off at home and drive to Miner Falls.

Spring break is slow, but it's just the type of speed I need. I get Tuesday and Thursday off at the bakery so I can go to the capitol to volunteer at PCH and see Katniss. Dad lets me sleep in for the first half of the week before I help him down at the bakery but on Wednesday I'm up with the sun. I don't mind waking early to work at the bakery. The work is relaxing and it's basically like hanging out with my dad. It's a nice break from the madness at school.

I tell my dad about the new class I'm teaching at PCH and about how crazy my schedule's been at school. He's never been a big talker and our conversation seems just like old times – my dad listening and me being a chatterbox.

"You sound like you enjoy it," my dad says after I tell him a story on Friday about Pollux. The day before he'd come down with Castor and had given me his drawing on the way out. He'd drawn a stick person again with a stick cat and a tree, but the funniest part was that the man was anatomically correct below the waist. Castor had been a little embarrassed but I just laughed and told Pollux it was great. He beamed.

"It's not even like work. The kids are amazing," I tell him.

Nyx and Nova come despite not being inpatients. Sloane tends to come when they do, but she's also outpatient and doesn't come all the time. Homes and Castor are inspirations, just like Katniss, in their battles. Homes, like Katniss, has leukemia but a different type. Castor has a brain tumor. And now that Pollux is starting to open up, he's great. Like Portia said, he's a sweetheart.

My dad pulls some bread out of the oven and smiles as I tell him about the kids. I'm working on decorating some sugar cookies while we talk.

"It's great that you found something you love," he says. There's an unspoken _but_ in his voice and I know what's coming next. "Have you thought about what you might want to do after you graduate?"

My mother hounded me about that during dinner Wednesday night. It ended in a full-scale argument about how I'm wasting my life and I slammed the door in her face when she made a backhanded comment about how I'm not in college to give her illegitimate grandchildren. I spent the night at Hersh's and came home from Katniss's late enough on Thursday that she and my father were already in bed. This is the first I've seen of my dad since.

My father's question doesn't have the same tone as my mother's, or maybe I'm just biased. Whereas my mother's voice was laced with a condescending sneer when she asked, I hear genuine curiosity in my dad's. He just wants what's best for me. But I don't understand how we can be expected to choose what we want to do for the rest of our lives when we're this young. I'm turning twenty in a week and I'm already supposed to know what I want to do until I'm sixty-five or older. How am I supposed to know?

"I don't know," I groan. He turns away from the dough he's kneading and leans against the counter. I smile sheepishly in his direction. "Maybe I'll just stay here and work at the bakery."

Dad sighs and walks across the workroom floor, coming to sit across from me at the table. "Peet, there's nothing for you in this town and we both know it."

The age of the small rural town is coming to a close. He's trying to keep it from me, but I know the town is struggling. Ever since the mine closed, we've lost really the only job that hired people and we've lost population. Kids are moving away – like Rye and Leaven – to bigger cities where there are more opportunities and when the older residents pass there's no one to take their places. Businesses keep getting boarded up because we just can't keep them going. There will be stubborn ones, like my dad and the Donners and the Cartwrights, who will live in Miner Falls until they die, but there's no future here. The town will die out with them, another old mining town for the record.

It's a hard thing to realize.

Dad reaches across the table to put his hand on my cheek. He doesn't say anything else before going back toward the dough. I take a deep breath and try to decorate more cookies, but I no longer have the motivation.

"Peeta, stop moping." I look up. My dad's still got his back to me, but he knows my brothers and me better than we know ourselves. "God didn't give you life to mope. We'll be fine and so will you."

My father is a religious man, but he never pushed it on us. Unlike my mother, who dressed Rye, Leaven, and me in the fanciest clothes we owned each Sunday, my father would be perfectly fine just letting the three of us wander the world until we came to faith or not. I guess it's a testament to the different generations that Rye, Leaven, and I all stopped going to church when we were in our mid-teens, probably because it was our mother forcing it. I went to church with my father for the first time in nearly a year on Sunday and the pews were practically empty. When I was younger they were always packed and Miner Falls had churches on every corner.

"It's tough times," my father had said when I asked if this happened every week.

For some reason, it digs a hole in my chest when I think about it. In my race to be something stellar at State and practically living in the capitol to be near Katniss, I've been causing a great divide between myself and the town I never wanted to leave in the first place. But, like my father said, there really isn't anything Miner Falls can offer me. I'm trying to build a life in the capitol, but still holding onto my roots and it leaves me feeling like I don't have a place anywhere.

"Your mother thinks you should be a lawyer," my father says, pulling me out of my thoughts.

I roll my eyes. My mother just wants me to have the salary of a lawyer. "Yeah, I know," I mumble. "What do you think?"

My father has told me before that he thinks I'd be good at it. He says I have a silver tongue. "I don't think you'd be happy," he says. "But I think you'd have the ability. Hell, Peeta, I think you have the ability to do anything."

"You're my father. You have to say that."

He turns and smiles at me. "I just want you to be happy. That's what's best for you," he says. "I look at Rye and see how happy he is and when Leaven calls I can hear it in his voice that he's happy. I don't care what you do or where you do it as long as you call me occasionally so I don't have to bug you like I bug Leav."

By the time he finishes his speech, my father has turned back to his dough and his voice is wavering. My father is dealing with the inner turmoil of having his boys leave. I don't think when we were born, and the town was still thriving, that he realized our adult lives would be any different from his, but the economy and the impending and inevitable fall of the mining industry in the Miner Falls area has changed everything. I want to tell him that I'm not going to leave, that I'm never going to leave, but I don't know if I can honestly say that. I don't know where my life is going or where it will take me. Rye calls occasionally and we can assume no news is good news with Leaven. I talk to them more through the virtue of texts, but even then it's quick questions and answers, more so from Rye than Leaven.

"You'll never have to bug me," I tell him. "You'll want to get rid of me."

My father mutters something under his breath that I don't hear.

* * *

My birthday falls on a Thursday, which means I'm volunteering. I don't know who spilled the beans – I'm inclined to think Prim or Rue – but when I get there Portia has a card signed by most of the volunteers and some of the kids have made their own cards for me. Homes, in particular, looks like he worked hard with a drawing on the front of his card. He asked me the other week if I could teach him how to draw animals. My first lesson was a mockingbird. His isn't colored like a mockingjay, but I feel a swell of pride fill me when I see his expression as he hands me the card.

"This is great!" I exclaim. It is. For a thirteen-year-old who's never really had much experience with art, I'm impressed. "You're going to put my art to shame, buddy."

"No way!" Homes says, shaking his bald head vigorously. "I wish I could draw as good as you!"

I lightly punch his shoulder, just barely making contact as to not hurt him. "You will. I don't have a doubt."

Sloane, Nyx, and Nova walk in next with a plate of cupcakes for me. I try to pawn some off on them, but Nyx and Nova can't eat them and Sloane tells me she's not hungry. I feel bad that they went to all that trouble to make me things they can't eat themselves and I still can't believe any of these kids remembered my birthday or looked highly enough toward me to want to do anything.

The last person to come through the door is Pollux. He's without Castor and looks down at his feet when he enters. I set the cupcakes down on my table and walk toward him. "Hey, Pollux, what's up?"

He looks up from his feet and smiles. He lifts his iPod out of his pocket. "I listen to Demi on the way here."

This is the first time I've ever heard him speak. His voice is slightly slurred and a little hard to make out, but he looks at me, waiting for a reply, so I latch onto the name. "Demi?"

"Lovato," he states, as if he's finding it hard to believe I've never heard of her. I have, but the first thing that popped in my head was Demi Moore. Prim listens to Demi Lovato sometimes and she's put some of her songs in my iTunes library, but I don't think I've ever actually listened to it.

"Oh," I say. He holds out his iPod and I take it in my hand. "_Skyscraper_. What's that?"

Pollux starts bouncing from foot to foot as he holds out his headphones to me. I take one and he takes the other, grabbing the iPod from my hand and pressing the play button. When it hits the chorus, Pollux even starts singing with it.

"_Go on and try to tear me down. I will be rising from the ground, like a skyscraper,_" he sings, stumbling a little through the lyrics.

I can't help but smile as I watch him. He has a smile spread across his face from ear to ear and he sways as he sings. It's as if he's in his own little world, just him and the song, and he doesn't care about anyone else. We listen to the whole song and when it's finished, he starts listening to the next song that, again, I don't recognize. I pull the earbud out of my ear and hand it to him.

"That was really good," I tell him, guiding him to his seat. He keeps one of the headphones in his ears, still slightly swaying. "Do you like her?"

Pollux nods. "S-she's my fav...favorite," he says.

I hand him a piece of paper and he starts drawing, still listening to Demi Lovato. I turn back to the other kids. The girls are giggling like usual and Homes is intently drawing something. I walk over to Homes and sit beside him in the chair.

"What's your major, Peeta?" he asks.

"Biology."

He nods his head. "Are you going to be a doctor?" he asks.

I shake my head. I can't get away from these questions. "I don't know," I tell him. "I don't know what I'm going to do."

"You should work with kids," he says. Then he looks down at his paper. He's drawing a cat. The face is great, but the body is slightly too long and the fur shading isn't quite right. "Will you help me with the body?"

"Sure."

His words resonate with me even after Homes's nurse comes looking for him for a blood draw. I had never thought about working with kids. I had been so set on picking a major and trying to figure out what I could do with biology that I had never thought about _who_ I wanted to work with. Up until he'd said that, I'd been thinking research might be my only option. But I still don't know what I would do to work with kids. A pediatrician? Pediatric specialty doctor? But, I don't want to be a doctor or nurse. I'd decided that long ago. I don't think I could handle watching kids die like Cinna or Dr. Heavensbee. I'd get too attached. How else can I use my biology degree to work with kids without being a doctor?

It hits me like a stack of bricks.

Katniss told me she had a meeting, so we'd have to catch dinner after and she'd come to Poplar when she was finished so we could walk together. Hersh has a study abroad meeting, Mitch has an ROTC thing, and Dalton is never in the dorm at dinnertime, so as I punch in the room code I'm planning to grab my laptop and look into my options. I know there's a program through the school of education where you can minor in secondary education if you're majoring in certain subjects. I briefly looked into it while I was at Rye's for Thanksgiving, not really giving much thought to it.

I open the door and turn on the lights.

"Surprise!"

Before I even registering what's going on, Katniss is in my arms, her legs wrapped around my waist and her arms around my neck, giving me a kiss. I wrap one arm around her to keep her from falling and hold onto the cupcakes from the girls in my other hand. Hersh is on one side of me with a noisemaker, blowing it so the paper tube hits my ear. Mitchell is standing against the back wall with his arms over his chest laughing while Dalton motions to a cake that clearly came from the loving hands of the decorating-inept Hersh or Katniss. Thresh and a bunch of our other friends are here as well and they have the radio playing. I'm half expecting Hersh to start reciting Korean lyrics and dancing like PSY when the song changes while I'm still standing flabbergasted in the doorway.

"W-what?" I splutter.

"Forget what day it is, birthday boy?" Hersh asks, his head bobbing to the music but his eyes focused on me. "Maybe you should recount the first few digits of pi?"

I move just enough to hit him with my body, my arm still wrapped around Katniss. "Not funny."

"Hersh and I made a cake," Katniss says, nodding her head to the table.

I walk over to see. It says _Happy B-day Peeta-Pi... _and it makes me laugh. "I know it's not Mellark's quality," Hersh says, slapping my back. "But, we had your dad on the line the whole time we were mixing, so we have secret recipe cake right here." He lets out a laugh. "Not saying it tastes like your dad's, but it looks great, in my opinion."

"We tried to make a pie," Katniss giggles. "But it came out horrible."

"And Haymitch told us if we set the house on fire we were dead," Hersh adds.

I can't believe it. "You didn't have to do this."

"Not everyday someone turns twenty," Dalton says from behind the cake. "You wait until twenty-one."

"And," Hersh says. "I wanted it to be big like twenty-one, since I won't be here for it."

I turn toward him and raise my eyebrows. I didn't realize he learned this soon about his application status, but apparently he has. He grins and nods his head. "I'll get you an Irish shot glass for next year's present," he says. "A belated birthday gift, or I can Skype you with it on your actual birthday, if you want."

"Way to make the day about you," Mitch says to Hersh, pulling a knife out of the drawer and pointing toward the cake. "Peeta, pretend to blow out the candles. We can't technically light any or we'll get fined for a fire hazard."

I think for a few seconds about what I would wish for. I have great friends, a beautiful – healthy – girlfriend, and even an idea of where I might want to go in my life. I don't think there's anything else I could want, but I pretend to blow anyway without a wish. I don't need anything else.

* * *

The next week, I set up a meeting with one of the assistant deans of the school of education to talk about my options. The woman tells me that the minor is usually started in the beginning of sophomore year, but once she looks over my degree audit and I drop my status as an honor student she tells me it might be a good fit. She hands me a paper with the different minors I can do in the education program and tells me that I should declare before registering for classes in late April. She even waives my application, stating that she'd be the one reading it anyway.

It was easier than I thought it would be.

I sit down outside Katniss's class and go through the different minors. The first sheet gives me the requirements for a general education minor. It wouldn't lead to state certification, but I could be approved individually. The secondary education minor, which is what I thought of originally, is the most in depth and requires the most number of classes. But, it would lead to certification and gives a chance for student teaching that the general education minor doesn't. The third sheet, however, is what gets my mind racing. The inclusive education minor – designed to teach students like me about special education.

"What are you looking at?"

I look up, not even realizing how long I've been looking at the papers. Katniss stares at me curiously and I shrug, sticking the papers in my backpack before standing up and taking her hand.

"I'm just looking into the future," I say. "Would you still love me if I became a teacher?"

Katniss turns to look at me. "You want to be a teacher?"

"You didn't answer the question."

She rolls her eyes and leans into me. "Of course, Mr. Mellark. The answer is true," she says, smirking. "What would you teach?"

I think back to the papers. Something has me drawn to the inclusive education minor and it's not just Pollux. Katniss herself has a hard time learning new things and Annie is specifically trained to work with her and other kids with similar learning disabilities caused by their medical histories. I wonder if that would technically be counted as special education.

"I don't know. I'm just looking into it."

She swings our clasped hands between our bodies as we walk toward the dorms. We shoot the breeze, just talking about nothing as we continue toward the dorms. We bypass Poplar and she leads me to Lime. "Well, I think you'll be a good teacher," she says as she swipes her keycard.

"You think?" I ask. She nods her head. "Because I'm not sure."

Katniss rolls her eyes. "If anyone was made to be a teacher, it was you."

My confidence sores as we climb the stairs and I can nearly feel my ego explode. I finally have a path and it's toward something I actually think I could enjoy. Maybe I should listen to the kids in my class more often. She punches in the room code while I'm still in the clouds, imagining standing in the front of a classroom giving a lesson to high schoolers about biology or helping kids like Pollux. She pushes me against her bed and I pull myself out of delirium to give her a look. Her pupils are dilated and she smirks.

"You can practice teaching right now," she says. Her hand trails down my chest, resting on my abdomen. Her fingers gently trace the belt on my jeans. "Teach me."

"Teach you what?" I ask. My body is visibly shivering as her fingers play with the hem of my shirt.

She doesn't look up at me, keeping her eyes fixated on the ground. "Teach me how to please you, Mr. Teacher."

I look at the door to Katniss's room. "Your roommate – "

"Is away for the weekend. She left at two for a retreat with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship," she says, leaning forward to press her body against mine, her lips finding my neck. I lift her up and set her down on the bed before finding her lips with mine. She runs her hands through my hair and her legs draw me toward her. I kiss her like this for a few minutes – at least, I think it's a few minutes, I'm not exactly sure about the time – before I lean back and yank my shirt over my head. I jump up on the bed, hovering on top of her and lean down to press my lips to her neck. She shivers and runs her hands over my chest and back.

We do this for a while, rolling every so often so the other is on top. When I get her back so she's lying against her pillows, I start my routine. I kiss her palms and then her stomach. I push her shirt up to her rib cage like usual and then I look up at her. We're both panting like madmen still trying to calm down from our breathless make out session prior. She looks like a deer in headlights. I'm pretty sure I look the same. I've put my hands in her pockets since we've added that to the routine, but this is different.

She is in turmoil right now. She wants to, she wants to be with me, she wants for a lot, but her mind won't let her. Her scar won't let her. Instead of pushing her shirt up and over her head, I lean my head back down and kiss the very bottom of her sternum, just barely visible, and then I let my hand graze her side.

Katniss sucks in a deep breath. "I love you," I tell her, pressing my lips to her skin again.

"I – I know," she stutters.

I take a risk and touch her over her shirt, letting my hand barely touch as it descends toward the valley where I can nearly see her heart beating out of her chest. "Are you okay?" I ask, flicking my eyes toward her. She has her eyes clenched shut, her breaths coming in and out in short bursts, but she nods her head. "I love you."

She nods her head again, but I'm not going any further until she opens her eyes and doesn't look like I'm going to murder her. "Katniss," I say gently. "Look at me."

She cracks one of her eyes and then the other. "I'm not going to hurt you," I tell her.

"I know," she says. "I'm sorry."

"You don't have anything to be sorry about."

Katniss gulps in a breath and shakes her head. "Will you hold me?"

We only leave the dorm that night for food. The rest of it is spent in each other's arms, watching movies on her laptop and occasionally kissing. But we've tested enough boundaries for the night. I fall asleep about halfway through _The Lorax_, my eyes barely able to focus on Katniss's laptop screen as I doze, and I wake up to find the computer on her dresser and Katniss shaking my arms.

"No," she murmurs. Her fingers claw at the sheets and her face presses into my bare chest. "No, please...don't leave..."

"Katniss," I whisper, shaking her.

She doesn't wake up. She keeps trying to bury her face in my chest. "No. No!"

"Katniss, wake up!"

Her eyes snap open and she looks dazed for a minute before she realizes where she is and then she wraps her arms around me. She doesn't say anything, just breathes heavily and rests her head on my chest. After she's seemingly calmed, I ask if she wants to talk about it. She shakes her head and keeps her cheek firmly planted on my chest.

I think she's asleep when she asks, "You're never going to leave me, right?"

It's so quiet I can barely hear her, but I do. It makes my heart sink into my stomach. Sometimes I wonder if Katniss will ever let me in all the way. She has an irrational fear of people leaving. Gale, Madge, her parents, Maysilee – all of these people had been important to her at one point in her life and ultimately left her behind. Sometimes I wonder if she looks at Prim and Haymitch the same way as he does me, as if none of us will stick by her forever.

"I'll be beside you until the day I die," I tell her, using my hand to direct her face toward mine. "I'm not going anywhere."

She's sleepy, half-aware, and looks at me through the haze of her post-dream. "We'll go together?"

"I'll go anywhere you go."

She blinks. "You'll stay with me, real or not real?"

I smile. "Always real."

We're silent for a minute. It's four in the morning but I'm no longer tired at all. I'm on an adrenaline high from waking Katniss. She, however, slips her head back down on my chest. "I love you real," she murmurs, her breathing beginning to even out. I chuckle under my breath and she sighs as she slips back under. I wrap my arms around her, protecting her from the nightmares that plague her, knowing that her body pressed into mine protects me. We protect each other. It's what we do.

* * *

Katniss doesn't go home for the weekend and instead we stay curled up in her bed for most of it. We don't get much farther than Friday night's adventures, but as the weekend progresses she gets more and more comfortable. On Sunday, when we're walking around campus, we stop in the bleachers of the baseball field and she sits in my lap.

"Was that second base?" she asks, referring to our weekend and not the bases on the field. She's pretty proud of the fact that she let me touch her, even if it was with her shirt on. And, I have to say I'm proud of her too and I'm pleased with what this means for us. Call me selfish, but the fact that she's letting me do this shows that she trusts me and with Katniss trust isn't an easy thing to gain.

"I believe it was," I say.

She giggles. "Thanks for teaching me what to do, Mr. Mellark."

I kiss her cheek. "You're going to get me fired for messing around with students, Miss Everdeen," I joke back.

A rosy blush fills her cheeks. "In all seriousness," she says, ducking her head. "I'm glad I could do something for you."

I fought her tooth and nail on that one. Hersh would call me an idiot, but I did. I wanted to make sure she was comfortable and not just doing it because she felt like she needed to in order for me to stay. She convinced me and as if it wasn't like Christmas in July being able to touch her, it was all I could do to contain myself when she touched me.

"Me too."

* * *

April sucks. It always sucks, but it sucks more than ever before now that I know what it feels like to spend an entire weekend alone with Katniss. I have way too many exams and then finals to start thinking about. Between our schedules, Katniss and I can barely find time to see each other. Katniss spends every waking minute of her day studying for exams and the more I watch her, the more I realize how much she struggles. I don't know if it's all a coincidence because of what I'm looking to minor in, but it ultimately makes my decisions easier.

I talk to Professor Beetee about it and I request to have him changed to my academic advisor. When I tell him about Pollux and what I've seen of Katniss, he smiles at me and nods his head.

"See why I told you not to settle?" he says. "I think it's a great choice for you."

I feel like I'm on top of the world when I go for my last volunteering session prior to finals. Homes, as always, is the first to arrive. He waves brightly and smiles, although he's looking a little worse for wear. He has bruises under his eyes and an IV he's dragging behind him. Castor and Pollux come next. Castor asks me how I'm doing and Pollux holds out his headphones. We listen to _Skyscraper_ again, as we have every visit since we listed to it the first time, before he sits down next to his brother.

After a while, I figure the Leeg twins and Sloane aren't coming today and sit down to help the boys.

"Are you excited for school to be over?" Castor asks.

I shrug. "I don't mind school," I tell them. _Now that I know what I'm doing_ is left unsaid.

"It's probably easier for you to see your girlfriend at school too," Homes says, looking up from his drawing. I lean over to see that he's starting to venture into the realm of realist faces. Faces are what I always find to be the hardest, but he seems to be doing an okay job. "Right?"

He is right about that reason why I like being at school better than home. I can see Katniss whenever I want. But it's not just that. However, discussing my terrible relationship with my mother is not part of my job description. So I just nod my head.

"Are we going to get a chance to meet her?" Castor asks. Pollux looks up but doesn't say anything.

"Who? Katniss?" He nods. "Do you guys want to meet her?"

Homes nods his head. "If you like her then she's got to be cool."

I honestly don't think I'll be able to get Katniss inside PCH unless she's going for a check-up but I don't tell the boys that. I haven't told them that Katniss was once a patient. It's not my story to tell. When they asked how we met, I just told them that her sister introduced us, which, in a way, is true.

So instead of telling them that Katniss hates hospitals, I shrug and say, "Maybe sometime next semester. I'll have to ask."

They nod their heads and go back to their work, satisfied with my answer for now. They work diligently and head out at their regular times. As I'm leaving, I run into Portia waiting at the door. I quickly run through my finals schedule, thinking she's going to ask about when I can start back up volunteering.

A familiar pool of dread sits at the bottom of my stomach when I see her face.

It doesn't even register until I'm sitting behind the wheel of my truck what she told me. My heart beats erratically and I press my forehead into the wheel. Nova passed away on Monday after suffering a seizure in the shower and hitting her head on the side of the tub. Seizures were common with her disorder and her family is normally very prepared to deal with them.

I drive back to campus on autopilot and arrive back in my room without even moving. I feel as if I teleported myself from the hospital to my bed. I don't even answer Hersh when he asks me what's wrong.

Katniss comes in and curls up into me. I completely forgot that I was supposed to meet her in the dining hall. She uses her thumb to wipe water off my cheeks. I'm not even sure how it got there. Am I crying?

She doesn't tell me that it's going to be okay or even ask me what happened. I think she knows, even without knowing the details. She just wraps her arms around me and hums in my ear, an old folksy lullaby I remember my father singing to us when we were kids. It's a Miner Falls lullaby. It's soothing. It's calming.

And it feels like home.

* * *

I go to the wake. It's closed casket but they have a DVD of photos playing in one of the rooms. I recognize a lot of faces from PCH and I stand by Portia for a good portion of the time I'm there. There is a card by the guestbook with Nova's picture and a prayer on the back, so I take one and place it in my pocket. Before I leave I kneel on the bench in front of her casket and rest my head on my clasped hands.

When I get back to State, I place the prayer card in a spot on my desk so I can look at it periodically.

This is the first death in my life since meeting Katniss and it makes me realize how grateful I am she's still here. I could barely make it through this; I can't even imagine the mess I would have been if the transplant didn't work. My mind can barely focus on the studying I have to do for finals and I make it a point to study with her – be it in the library, my room, or wherever she's going. Sometimes I second-guess my memory that she's alive and it puts me at ease to see her, to hold her hand. It's like my nightmares have invaded my awake mind and my first night back at home without her nearby is miserable. I wake up in a pool sticky sweat.

Leaven's graduation is the week after I get back from school and my father insists on me joining them. I text Katniss the entire sixteen-hour drive down (except when I trade off driving with Dad) and, for once, it's her telling me that she's safe and not the other way around. Rye comes down for the day and heads back to Virginia after the congratulatory graduation dinner. I wish I had flown with him so I could go back.

Breakfast the day after Leaven's graduation is almost torturous. Our mother keeps bringing up Rye's MBA program and how Lux calls to talk to her (and makes a backhanded comment about how she barely knows what Leaven's girlfriend looks like). It keeps going south when she finds out that he's continuing his work in the orthopedic biomechanics laboratory he's been working in for a year. I think it sounds cool, but that might just be because I spent over a year of my life dealing with orthopedists and physical therapists with my leg. Our mother, on the other hand, raises an eyebrow. To her, people's jobs fall into broad categories, like business and doctor and baker. I'm not sure she knows what to think of Leaven's biomedical engineering degree.

"But what are you exactly _doing_?"

Leaven slams his fork into the plate, making a clang, but quickly masks it as trying to fork the eggs. I know because I've used the same technique in the past. "We're looking at dysfunction of the rotator cuff in shoulder disorders," he says through his teeth. He's already told her this about four times today.

"Yes, I know that," Mother snaps. "I mean, what is _your_ ultimate goal? You can't do this forever!"

On the contrary, Mother, many people make a decent career out of research. You never know, maybe Leaven will figure out some new disease or technique and then our name will be plastered on it – Mellark's disease or Mellark's syndrome. Wouldn't you be thrilled, Mother?

My father pats the table. "I think we need to get the recipe for these muffins," he says.

That's how my father does things. He changes the subject.

Leaven looks at his wrist. "Oh, shucks," he says, although he doesn't sound too distressed. He stands and straightens out his clothes. "Look at the time. I have to be moved out of the dorm in an hour so I guess I better go. Dad, it was great to see you." He stands behind my chair and puts his hands on my shoulders. "Peet, don't go nuts." There's double meaning to that, but I hold my tongue as he turns to our mother. "Ma, give my best to Rye and Lux. I'm _sure _you'll talk to them very soon."

He just about runs over a waiter on his way out.

Mother is surprisingly quiet on the drive home. She sits in the backseat and looks out the window for the first few hours and then pulls out a book. When my father and I change drivers again just outside of Savannah, she looks like she's about halfway through her favorite Nicholas Sparks. I bet my mother knows _Nights in Rodanthe_ by heart, and yet it's her go-to book. I lean my head against the window and watch the Georgia highway pass by.

By the time we get back to Miner Falls after hitting a motel in South Carolina and then driving the rest of the way the next day, I've spent too much time with my parents. It's already dark, so I change quickly and head out to the meadow where I know there's a party going on. Most of the kids are there and there's a bonfire and Hersh is already a few beers in. Delly, who I haven't seen since I've been back, wraps her arm around my shoulder.

"Welcome home," she says, shouting over the music.

I don't take the beer Hersh holds out but my mind spins anyway. I try to relax, but I can't. It's not as if I didn't know my family was falling apart. Our family has been dysfunctional at best for most of my childhood, but to see it actually crumble right in front of my eyes? I haven't talked to Leaven since he stormed out of the restaurant in Miami, despite having texted him a few times, and I honestly think that might have been his goodbyes.

_Peet, don't go nuts_.

He meant for me not to let my mother get to me like she got to him.

Yeah, good luck with that.

I'm not enjoying myself, so I wander back home. The light is still on in the kitchen when I make my way inside and my mother is sitting at the table. Dad has to be up bright and early the next day at the bakery so he passed out before I even left for the party. She looks like she's in a decent mood and she hasn't said much of anything since Leaven walked out on us. It's been nice. Maybe she's reflecting on her life choices. I can hope, right?

She looks up from the bakery papers she's looking at when I shut the door, kicking my shoes off. I feel like I'm walking on eggshells as I stride toward the sink and pour a glass of water. I sit down at the kitchen table across from her, sipping the water and watching for sudden movements.

She clucks her tongue. "You're home early."

I shrug. "Yeah."

She sighs and shuffles the papers. She's not really looking at them – she's trying to make it seem like she is so she can appear all nonchalant and friendly. My mother-radar starts to explode in my head. She's going to say something. I know she is. This is how she does it. She makes you calm and then –

"Was Delly there?"

I frown. It wasn't what I was expecting. "Yeah," I say, drawing it out. "Why?"

Mother shrugs and scratches the tip of her nose. "She's a nice girl."

My mother is like a tick. She's a little tiny pest the burrows under your skin during the summer without fail. My mother does not like Katniss. Everyone knows this and she's told me time and time again that I have _no business being with Katniss Everdeen_, but she's never directed me toward another girl.

Until now.

"Delly's one of my best friends," I tell her. "And I'm with Katniss."

My mother slams one of the papers down on the table. "Oh, for crying out loud," she says. "You're wasting your time. You ain't gonna marry your first girlfriend, Peeta!"

"How do you know? You don't know her at all! You've never given her the time of day!" I don't know when I stood up or when I started yelling, but I am now. There's a creek upstairs, but I let myself seethe. "I don't understand why you don't like her! Rye likes her! Dad likes her!"

I'll leave Leaven out of it.

"Oh, of course your father likes her!" Mother screams.

Speaking of my father, he walks into the kitchen, sticking his arm in the sleeve of his robe. He looks so confused and I feel bad for him. He was probably thinking that Mother had finally thought about shutting her mouth for once in her life.

"What is all the yelling about?" he demands.

My mother points at me. "He hasn't got the sense God gave a goose."

I feel like a child, but I point right back at her. "She wants me to break up with Katniss and date Delly!"

"At least Delly's going somewhere with her life!" she yells. "I don't even know what your precious Katniss is majoring in!"

"You wouldn't care if I told you!"

My father doesn't even know what to do. He has his arms raised as if he's going to enact some peace treaty, but we're smack in the middle of a world war. I wouldn't be surprised if the neighbors came knocking down the door telling us to shut up.

Whatever armistice my father wants to happen, it doesn't come. My mother starts yelling again. "I don't even know what_ you_ want to do!" She's right about that. I never told her anything about my college life. "Why can't you be more like your brother and have your life put together?"

"I'm not Rye. I'm never going to be Rye. And, you know what, I don't want to be Rye," I say. I take a deep breath. This is probably not the time to tell my parents about my new career path, what with all of our emotions running wild, but I don't care. I'm going to do it anyway. "And I know what I want to do. I'm minoring in education and I want to teach kids with disabilities."

My mother is actually quiet for a moment. She fully expected to win this argument and, had we had this argument a few weeks ago, she would have won. But I do have my life figured out. I know what I want to do. I've made my decision. I watch as she takes it in, her face blank until it takes on a look of disbelief.

"A teacher?" she clarifies. I nod. "Of course that's what you want to do. You could never do anything right!"

"How is there anything wrong with being a teacher?"

My mother throws her hands in the air. "It's women's work, Peeta!"

I can't do this anymore. I raise my hands in surrender and shake my head. "I'm done," I say. I turn to look at my dad and he has his mouth open, trying to touch the floor with his chin. "I just can't do this anymore. I'm done. I'm done listening to you talking about me like I'm nothing and talking about Katniss like she's some sort of parasite. I'm done."

I spin on my heel and walk to the front door, pulling my shoes back on my feet. "Where do you think you're going?" my mother hisses, but I ignore her. She taps her foot on the ground impatiently. "Answer me!"

Nope. I tie up the laces of my sneakers and grab a coat off the hook. It's warm out, but I don't know where I'm going. I'm just getting out of here.

"If you leave this house, Peeta Mellark, so help me...you will not disrespect your mother!"

I open the front door and turn back to her. There are so many things I could say to her to show her _exactly_ what she really means to me as a mother. Instead of saying any of it, I just slam the door behind me.

The door to the truck jams, so as I'm pulling it open, my father comes running out of the house. I can see nosy neighbors with their faces peeking out through the blinds. My father comes up beside me as I get the door open and rests a hand on my shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Dad," I tell him. I really am.

He shakes his head and puts his hands on my cheeks. "Go to Rye's. I'll call him now and you stop every half-hour, you hear me? I don't want you fallin' asleep at the wheel." I nod my head and he leans forward, kissing my curls like he always does. He sighs and pats my cheek with his left hand. "Love you, bud."

I nod again and he lets go of me so I can get in the truck. He backs away as I put the truck in drive and I watch him in the rear view as he disappears in the darkness of the unlit country roads.

* * *

_Nyx, Nova, and Sloane were all named for the meanings, not necessarily because I thought the names could fit in modern society. Nyx (Leeg 1) was a powerful goddess and the embodiment of the night in Greek mythology. Nova (Leeg 2) is an astronomical term for a star that suddenly increases in brightness and then fades. I thought this fit for her well, considering Leeg 2 is the first member of Squad 451 to die. I chose Sloane for Jackson because Jackson was described as sluggish in the books, so I chose Sloane because it started with the "slow" sound. _

_I debated for a long time about the Pollux storyline but ultimately decided to go with it. Pollux, for me, was a very powerful character in the books and I wanted him to be just as powerful to me here. Over the summers, my younger brother and I volunteer at a place for young adults with disabilities and I based Pollux heavily off of one of the boys we worked with two summers ago. He was in love with Demi Lovato, drew a picture for my brother like the one Pollux gave Peeta, and was super quiet because he spoke with a small stutter. It was a very powerful experience for my brother and me – he wrote his college admissions essay on him and I even debated going down the career path that Peeta is going down for a while. Peeta, even before I decided to write a continuation, was going to be a teacher, but the more I thought about Katniss's learning struggles and then bringing Pollux in, the more that all worked out. _

_Peeta mentions _Glee_ and the character that I'm referring to is Becky Jackson, a cheerleader with Down syndrome. If you've never seen it, she's a wonderful character._

_Yes, Peeta is born on Pi Day (3/14). I know, bad baker joke. _

_The slightly political part with Mr. Mellark and Miner Falls is based off a tiny town I've gone to for the past two years in southwest VA. I debated putting this part in as well, but I felt that it was a big part of Peeta's struggles of finding a place, considering his home is changing. I'm sorry that this part has been a lot more political than my parts in the past, but I felt like this in particular couldn't be ignored. I'm not trying to offend anyone and I hope this was written to your high standards of maturity. It's meant to show his struggles, not make any major political statements._

_The song that plays at Peeta's surprise party is _Gangnam Style_ by PSY, although I'm sure you all realized that. _

_The theme of this section was "Leaving Home" which, obviously, is much more literal than the theme of the last part. Next is the section that corresponds with the milestone of "Becoming Financially Independent" and I want to warn you all in advance that it might be a while. I go back to school tomorrow and it's the home stretch until finals, so be warned. I will be posting updates to _Shine On My Name_, my other fic, every Friday since they're already written to tide you all over though._

_Also, a note on the rating. It will stay the same, a mature T, and the writing of any future...sexual situations will be written similarly to now - nothing that would make SC blush. Sorry for all you smut fans, but I don't think it's relevant for this story. As much as I love it myself, and considered it, I fully believe that as a narrator Peeta would take into consideration Katniss's comfortability and wouldn't share something as intimate as that with all of us. _

_Thank you so much for reading this. You guys have been so great to me and it's always nice to hear that you're waiting on updates. I'm sorry about the absurdly long author's note at the end. Let me know what you think!_


	3. Part III

_I am so sorry that this took so long to get up. Real life got in the way. I hope this lives up to your great expectations. Enjoy!_

* * *

Part III

_And she says you are not alone_

_Laying in the light_

_Put out the fire in your head_

_And lay with me tonight_

-Patty Griffin_, Not Alone_

I spent more time with Mrs. Donner than I did with my own mother growing up. To give her the benefit of the doubt, it wasn't unusual for kids in Miner Falls to be found in yards that weren't theirs. The Donner house in particular was a hot spot. Hersh has three brothers and, because of that, there were never less than eight kids running around their property. It didn't hurt that Luanne Donner, known around Miner Falls as Mama Lu, treated every kid that stepped through her house as one of her own – both in the best ways and the worst. She whipped us into shape at the same time as she whipped up gallons of sweet tea.

When I was really little, maybe five or six, I'd pretend she was my mother. It wasn't that far of a stretch. She cheered for me at the county soccer league games when my mother wasn't there – and she never was because she _always_ had something more pressing to do at the time. Once she cared for me when Leaven broke my wrist. We were mud wrestling; he was nine and I was seven. My mother told me she'd look at it in the morning, but she was still sleeping and refused to get up when Rye gingerly put me in my fleece so we could walk up the hill to grab the Donner brothers on our way to school. Hersh's mother took one look at me before sticking me in Mr. Donner's truck and driving down to Mr. Parkinson at the apothecary, who called for an x-ray at Boone Memorial. Dad had been so mad at my mother that day. It was one of the only times I remember him raising his voice in my childhood.

I slam my hands against the steering wheel as my phone lights up in the passenger's seat for the fourth time in the last ten minutes. I lunge forward and turn it off, the screen going black and the blinking voicemails from my mother now dead to me. She's only calling to tell me to come home and it's not even because she wants me there. She doesn't want the neighbors to start talking.

Well, you know what, Mother? Fuck you.

I pull off to the side of the turnpike and lean my head against the steering wheel. My chest quivers as I try to draw in steady breaths. It's not working and I absolutely loath myself for being affected by this. But, as much as I hate to say it, she's still my mother and I would be lying if I said I wasn't holding out for that one thread of decency she must have somewhere in her Grinch-like soul, the piece of her that would realize that, even though I wasn't the daughter she wanted, I am her son. I am important.

The lump in my throat is too hard to swallow and I swat at the water forming on my cheeks. I'm embarrassed that I'm crying for her. It doesn't even make any sense. When I left Miner Falls about a half-hour ago I was so angry my body shook. I felt like I had a tornado spinning through my veins. This entire situation is so overwhelming. Nothing seems to be connecting. It's like my brain is short-circuiting, leaving me livid, upset, and frustrated, as well as every emotion in between.

Once my little tantrum is finished, I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, take a few deep breaths, and restart my good ol' Ford. I'm still about two hours from the Virginia border and than another hour and a half to Roanoke from there. I've made good time thus far, but I don't remember even driving and I'm pretty sure I was speeding in my rage. Luckily the roads are dead tonight, but I do need to slow down.

I flip on the radio and put on a country station, hoping it'll shake my mother from my head. It doesn't.

It just grates on me that she doesn't even know what she's talking about. Leaven's job is really important to the medical field but she doesn't care because he's not Leaven Mellark, MD. As for me, I could become the President of the United States and it wouldn't impress her. In fact, I'd probably still do something wrong – like run for the other party or choose a bad VP. I spent so long trying to figure out what I wanted to do and then, when I finally realize what I'm passionate about, she laughs in my face.

And now I'm mad again. I flip the station to one playing the national top forty and try to focus on the road ahead of me.

_Forget about her._

_She's not worth it._

I repeat that any time I start to get worked up.

My eyes start to hurt about two hours into my trip. By the time I take Exit 9, which will take me on US460 toward Princeton/Pearisburg, VA, I'm struggling. It's one thirty in the morning, but even my fits can't keep me going too much longer. Dad told me to stop every half-hour or so, but the only time I stopped was when I had my fit. I want to at least get into Virginia before I stop, so I go along my route.

I'm not familiar with Virginia, especially this late at night, but luckily I don't get too lost when I take an exit. Using my phone to figure out where I am, I manage to find myself on Main Street in Pearisburg around two. I pull into a Hardee's parking lot and turn my phone on but to silent. This way I can decide on a plan of attack without the repeated buzzing of missed calls from home. I'm looking at getting to Rye's around 3:30 or so if I don't make any more stops...I'll just step out and do some jumping jacks before getting back on my route...that sounds like a good idea...maybe after I close my eyes...for a minute...

* * *

There's a crick in my neck when my eyes blink open. It's still black outside and I rub my eyes with my thumb and pointer finger. I lift my head from where it's leaning against the window and look at the clock. It blinks 3:27 and I'm still in Pearisburg, sitting in my truck in a Hardee's parking lot. I reach over and grab my phone, ignoring all of the missed call bubbles that light up the screen. I text Rye to tell him I'm going to be later than expected and use my phone to get me back on course before throwing it onto the bench. It slides across the seat, hitting the door with a crack. I wince at the sound but decide to leave it there for now. I'll get it when I get to Rye's, which is now going to be around five if I go without stopping.

The closer I get to Roanoke, the more comfortable I become. I've only visited Rye and Lux a few times, but I'm decent with directions. Doing it in the dark stumps me a little, but I get into his neighborhood just as I'm beginning to nod off again. The truck clock says 4:53 when I pull into Rye's driveway. The sky is still dark, but the porch light helps me see his silhouette sitting on the stoop. I flip off the headlights and take a deep breath before killing the engine. All I have is myself, nothing but the clothes on my back and whatever is in my wallet. I lean across the bench and grab my phone. It shut off when it hit the door, so I turn it on before stuffing it in my pocket. Then, I push open the door of the truck and hop out.

Rye stands when I walk toward him and pulls me into his arms. I think we're both borderline delirious as he leads me into the house. He opens the door to one of his guestrooms and I see that he's laid out a pair of his Virginia Tech sweatpants and an old Miner Falls Volunteer Fire Department shirt on the bed. He leaves me to change and when I'm out of my jeans and into the sweats I go to bathroom. He holds out a spare toothbrush and then fiddles through this cabinet for something while I clean my teeth.

We haven't said anything to each other. Maybe it's because it's five in the morning and we're both exhausted. He looks like he hasn't slept all night while he's been waiting for me. The silence could be because Lux is sleeping and he's trying to be courteous. Or it could be that he doesn't know what to say.

"Take these," he says, uttering the first words between us. He shakes a few pills out of a Benadryl bottle. "It'll help you sleep."

I'm usually heavy on my feet and, with the exhaustion of my travels, tonight is no exception. I feel terrible pounding across the floor and try to keep my treads at least lighter than usual for Lux's sleep. She and Rye are opening their home to me. This is the least I can do for them.

Rye stays in the doorway, his hand hovering over the light switch while I all but crawl into the bed. I feel like a little kid again, when Dad would tuck us all in and kill the lights, turning around once more to say he loved us before going back downstairs.

"Rye," I say as he goes to flip the switch. He turns. "Thanks."

He pats the doorframe. "It's not your fault she's...just don't worry about it. Try to sleep, okay?"

I can hear him walking back down the stairs rather than go into his own room. I flip over to face the wall trying to reconcile with everything that's happened. My mind betrays me and thinks about my mother, wondering if she's up thinking about me or even worrying about if my journey went okay. It feels like a punch in the gut because I know she isn't.

* * *

My body wakes up around one in the afternoon but I don't feel rested. Benadryl, which was my dad's cure to long car rides of 'are we there yet?' when we were kids and he had to take us to help cater an event, always makes me wake up feeling like I'm hungover. I lay in bed for a few minutes before rolling out, redressing in the clothes I was wearing last night, and heading down to the main level of Rye's house.

He's sitting at the counter in the kitchen looking at the newspaper. It's a Wednesday, so Lux must be at work and Rye must have called in sick. The familiar pit of guilt fills my stomach again. Rye looks like he didn't get much sleep. I wonder if he even went to bed.

He looks up at me when I come in and sets the newspaper down on the counter.

"Good morning, sleeping beauty," he says.

I collapse onto the stool next to him and put my head in my hands. He chuckles beside me and I hear him slide his coffee cup toward me. I push it back toward him without picking my head up and I hear him laugh again. Suddenly a hand falls on the back of my head, startling me so I tense up.

Rye ruffles my hair. "When you actually wake up, call Dad," he says. His hand leaves my head and I can hear him walk around kitchen. "He wants you to call sometime today while he's at the bakery."

My phone is still on the nightstand upstairs, so I roll off the chair and slink back up to the guestroom I'm staying in while Rye opens the fridge. I lie back on the bed and grab my phone, tapping through my contacts to kill time before calling the bakery. I'm not exactly sure what my dad will say now that the immediacy of the situation has dissipated. The first thing that pops into my head is anger. He is going to be mad at me for picking a fight right after Leaven's incident with her. Or maybe disappointed.

"Mellark Bakery, what can I do for you?"

"Hey, Dad," I say quietly.

He sighs and I can see him if I close my eyes. He's sitting down at the decorator's table, running a hand over his face, and trying to decide what to say next. My father never has been and never will be verbose but his tone of voice is always inflective of his moods and feelings.

A sigh is never good.

"Peeta –"

"I'm sorry," I blurt out, not even letting him get a word in. He says my name again, but the rest comes tumbling out of my mouth. "I shouldn't have left. I should have just gone upstairs and ignored her. I made you and Rye worry all night. And now you don't have any help at the bakery and you're probably mad."

When I take a breath, he finally gets his turn to speak.

"Whoa, rein it in, cowboy," he says. "I'm not mad at you."

I throw my arm over my face. "You're not?"

He sighs again. "Well, I'm not happy, but that's not your fault," he says slowly. "I know your mother can be...hard to live with at times. And she's never made it easy on you."

The mention of my mother sours my attitude. A grouchy mumble escapes my lips, which sounds more like gobbledygook than actual language. My father either doesn't understand or chooses not to comment on it.

"Your brother and I talked last night," he adds. "We thought it might be...good for you to...get out and see another part of the country."

I would hardly call living a state over "another part of the country" but I don't say anything. The way he says it, as if he's trying to convince himself at the same time as me, makes my stomach sink. As much as I do not want to face my mother again for a while, having my father telling me not to come back hits me weird. Like he's choosing her over me.

But that's ridiculous.

It's my turn to sigh. He's doing this for my own good. My father loves me and, as much as I don't understand sometimes, he loves my mother and the best thing for the both of us is to be apart for now. It's just more practical to send me to Rye's than for him to try and force my mother into doing something she doesn't want to do.

"Yeah," I agree. "It's probably for the best."

He fumbles with something on the other end of the line. "I think it'll be a good thing," he says.

My father's voice is incapable of hiding his feelings. He realizes that this fight means him losing out on one of the last summers I spend at home. For my father, who has only ever wanted his sons close by, it's a hard shake of reality's cold fist. I can't say I'm too thrilled about it either. Hersh, Delly, Katniss – they'll all be too far away to see more than once or twice. I may not see Delly again until Christmas.

"Okay."

My father sighs again. I don't think I've ever heard him sigh this much. "I love you, Bud."

Dad has never skimped on the _I love yous _for any of us growing up and I think it's because he was trying to make up for the lack of them we got from our mother. My father doesn't say much, so what he does say is important. He chooses his words for a purpose. I close my eyes and feel a lump in my throat.

Most kids probably feel this kind of detachment when they leave for college, their parents waving to them as they drive away. I never really felt that. I had hugged my dad and told him I'd be back that weekend to help with a massive wedding order he needed all hands on deck to complete. I'm feeling it now instead.

"I love you too, Dad."

After the call ends, I don't move. I stay flat on my back as reality sinks in. I'm in Roanoke for the remainder of the summer. That is three hours away from Katniss. Four hours from Miner Falls.

* * *

I stay in bed until Rye comes up the stairs and tells me he made me lunch, but when I see he made breakfast foods I nearly lose it. French toast, with the syrup in a smiley face when we were younger, was Dad's pick-me-up food for when one of us hit rock bottom.

I feel like a fish out of water, flopping around on the carpet while the cat bats it around, the bowl on its side. I don't really have a home anymore. I'm freeloading with Rye and Lux. I won't see Katniss. I can't volunteer at PCH like I had planned. What exactly am I going to do in Virginia until I go back to school in August?

"You okay?"

I nod my head.

Rye pulls up a stool and takes a sip of his coffee. "I called Leaven this morning," he says. "Little shit wouldn't pick up until I filled his voicemail threatening to come to Miami and shove his phone up his ass."

I can't help but roll my eyes and chuckle a bit. Rye smiles.

"What'd you say?" I ask.

Rye shrugs and takes a sip of his coffee. "Just told him what happened. Can't say it surprised him all that much," he tells me. He starts to fidget, his hand going to wrap around the back of his neck like he wants to say something else. Then he shakes his head and continues in an airier tone. "You eat and I've got some clothes you can wear for now. Dad said he'll send a box, but it probably won't get here until the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth maybe, so..."

Rye keeps talking about what we'll do between now and the time it will take for the package of stuff from Dad to arrive in Roanoke while I groan and put my head in my hands again. Prim's sixteenth birthday is on the twenty-ninth and I promised to make her a cake for it. I'm going to ruin Prim's birthday.

I was right when I told my dad I should have sucked it up and ignored my mother.

Once he leaves the kitchen to go into the living room to watch television, I head back upstairs. I need to talk to Katniss. My fingers hover over the call button as my teeth grate. Katniss knows my relationship with my mother isn't great, but I've kept most of the conflict away from her. The last time she was in the same room as my mother was at Rye's wedding nearly a year ago and even then my mother maintained her distance, as if just being within arm's reach of Katniss would make her keel over. No, it has always been me going to the capitol and when Katniss insisted on coming to Miner Falls we would go to the bakery or on a hike in the woods.

My finger taps the call button and I put the phone to my ear as it begins to ring.

Part of me stayed away from talking about my mother as a way to protect Katniss. I'll admit that. Talking about mine, I thought, would make her think about hers and that usually causes her to shut down to some degree. She can talk about her dad for moments, giving me brief anecdotes or funny tales she remembers from before his accident. She never talks about her mother.

"Hey," she says when she picks up. "I was just thinking about you."

"Were you?"

I can hear Prim giggling in the background and then a shuffling. "Hold on." The door slams and then it sounds like she picks up her phone again. "Sorry," she says. "Prim just came home from school. You have perfect timing."

"Something earthshattering happen to her?"

I can almost see her rolling her eyes. "_All my friends have boyfriends_," she groans, trying to imitate her sister. She does a decent job. "I told her she's too young and she just about bit my head off."

That makes me smile. Sometimes I think Katniss doesn't realize her sister is almost the same age as we were when we met. She still sees Prim as a cute little kid with pigtails, but everyone else knows that Prim's maturity level for the most part rivals that of those two or three times her age. Time and tragedy have forced her to grow too quickly and it is comforting to know that she's still affected by school and boys. It means she's still a kid.

"Stop smiling. You're supposed to agree with me."

I laugh outright when Katniss predicts my reaction. "I'll stop smiling when you stop scowling."

"Then tell me something good."

That reminds me of why I called her and the smile falls off my lips. I look around the guestroom and bite my tongue for a minute, trying to figure out how to phrase it so she won't worry. Katniss has anxiety and I'd rather not perpetuate it.

"Well," I start. "The good news is that I'm spending some time with Rye this summer."

"So, you're going to Roanoke?" she asks. "Are you going for, like, a week?"

I let out a breath. "I'll probably be here all summer."

"What?" she yelps. "Why? What happened?"

"Nothing you need to worry about."

Katniss doesn't accept that answer. I think I knew in the back of my head that she wouldn't before I even said it. "No, what is making you spend three months in Virginia?" she demands. "When do you leave?"

"I'm already here."

"What?" she breathes. "Peeta, what happened?"

The words get stuck in my throat. The tip of my tongue refuses to move from its position gliding over the backs of my front teeth. Her tone of voice makes my stomach flip in my gut. She's worrying about me because I couldn't keep it cool in front of my mother. It makes me feel terrible.

"I'm fine, Kat, really," I say, letting a long breath out of my nose. "I just...my mother..."

She stays quiet but the words don't roll off my tongue. I don't want Katniss to worry. And, if I have to tell Katniss about my dysfunctional family, I'd rather do it in person, where I can see her face and monitor her facial expressions.

"It's fine. Really, we just got in an argument and Rye offered to let me stay here so I don't have to deal with her."

I wish I had a normal family, where my mother was proud of me, and my father didn't have to send me away to keep the peace. Unfortunately, my family has never worked that way, at least in my immediate memory. I'd rather not wallow in it, just forget about it and move on with my life. Forget about _her_.

But, as much as I want that, there's still a voice in the back of my head reminding me that she's my mother. Not a good mother, but mine nonetheless.

"Are you sure that's all?"

She knows I'm not telling her the whole truth. Her voice has an edge to it. We're honest with each other on a lot of things. Certain topics, like our mothers, just haven't been fleshed out all the way. We know the basics – Katniss's mother committed suicide; mine is controlling and overbearing, while at the same time being apathetic and miserable to be around. I don't want to hash her out to Katniss over the phone.

"I'll tell you when we're face-to-face."

Katniss sucks in a breath. "So, am I not going to see you until school starts then?"

"I promised Prim a cake, so I'm going to figure out a way to get there for her birthday," I say. "I don't care if I sleep in my truck, I'm not ruining her sweet sixteen because of this. After that it'll probably be Skype for a while."

"This is going to suck," she states.

I can't agree more.

* * *

It takes a few days, but I make a plan for Prim's birthday. Her party is the Saturday after her actual birthday, so I'm going to head out early that Friday morning. I'll spend the rest of the day at the bakery with Dad, making the cake and helping him out on the day-to-day. I'll spend the night at Hersh's and on Saturday morning I'll grab the cake and the stuff my Dad has packed up and head to the capitol, where Katniss has convinced Haymitch to let me stay until Sunday.

I just feel like a freeloader, I guess. A wanderer, maybe, is a better term. But, I can't go home. Mom has written me off now just as she's written off Leaven and, according to Hersh, she's gone around Miner Falls telling everyone that she tried to make me stay but that I'm a wild stallion. I'm not sure how many people actually believe her, but I do know that she's convincing enough to paint me into the villain. Everyone has always said that I'm my father's clone in looks and temperament, but I know I inherited the silver tongue from her.

Rye and Lux take me to church with them on Sunday. I only go through the motions during the service – singing, standing, and praying when directed but letting the reverend's words go in one ear and out the other. I'm sure that if I really wanted to pay attention, Reverend Templesmith would be an excellent speaker. After service, Rye takes me over to meet him. He introduces himself as Pastor Claudius and offers to meet with me if I need to talk. I just look at Rye, wondering how many people here know about what's going on, before excusing myself to go to the food table.

Their church is full of families and little kids fresh out of Sunday school are running around the large gymnasium set up for after-church mingling. It's so different from my childhood memories of church. Miner Falls seemed to have a church on every corner, but none were this large. The main building itself could fit all the churches in Miner Falls all together and seems new. There are stained glass windows in the lobby – three in a row that read JESUS NEVER FAILS. The gymnasium doesn't look any different from one found at a high school, aside from the cross at center court.

I don't want to be here at all. I want it to be Friday so I can see Hersh and Delly and Dad. I want it to be Saturday morning. I want to see Katniss. My foul mood is definitely showing on my face, but I don't have the energy to mask it. Rye has his eyes on me most of the time so I lift the corners of my lips up when I see him watching me.

Friday cannot come fast enough.

I have four days of nothing to do before heading back for Prim's birthday, so I use this time to do some things for myself. I go into downtown Roanoke and buy a sketchbook so I can draw. I sketch the Roanoke Star one day and sit in the parking lot of the airport and draw the mountains. I sketch Katniss from memory as well because I can't help myself. I spend way too much time in a Waffle House with my book and pencils drawing, to the point where the waitress just puts my order down for me on Thursday.

Another thing I do is research what I'm going to do when I graduate. I'll leave State with licensure to teach, but I'll need to go for a master's degree. State doesn't offer a master's program in special education so I'll have to travel. There are two programs within a few hours drive of Katniss and the capitol. That's another thing I'll have to tell her about face-to-face.

I know Katniss wants to stay in the capitol. She already has a job lined up with Haymitch when she graduates. He has a non-profit he runs called the It Can Be Good Again Foundation, which helps families with children being treated with leukemia and other cancers at PCH by providing support, both financially and emotionally, and helping the families remain on their feet after treatments end. The Foundation helps local schools and businesses partner with PCH and put on fundraisers and so much more. I know that a lot of the Miner Falls families have benefited from it in the last few years. Haymitch also works as an accountant, his job prior to starting the non-profit. Katniss, once she graduates with her degree in accounting, will help him with both. On top of that, staying there gives Katniss the piece of mind that she's near PCH, where all her medical records are stored, and where she grew up.

When I get back to the house on Thursday night, Rye is still at work and Lux is at her Bible Study group so I pull Rye's laptop out of its spot in the den. Their house is so organized with everything in its place it makes the house in Miner Falls look like a pigsty. That's probably why my mother always insisted we drive to Roanoke. This neatness isn't Rye's doing.

I pull up my email. I need to inform Portia that I'll be unable to volunteer during the summer. Maybe they can hook up a Skype call so I can tell the kids goodbye. I won't be able to head over there while I'm back in town because volunteer services is closed at PCH on the weekends, at least for student volunteers. Portia can't work all the time I suppose.

My inbox has five new messages – four junk emails and one from an email I don't recognize but know instantly. Who else would have a username mellarl at an .edu domain?

I don't click on it immediately. In the hours after the blow up, I tried to contact Leaven and he ignored me. All of my texts went unanswered and this is the first time he's reached out for me despite knowing what happened. Rye told me that he called Leaven the morning after I left.

Procrastinating, I send the email to Portia. Then I close the laptop and open a Snapchat from Prim on my phone. Then I send her a reply. I grab a drink from the fridge and sit back down on the couch in the den.

I click it before I lose my nerve.

_Peeta,_

_I'm sorry if my fight with our mother had any influence on what happened with you and her. It wasn't my intention and I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to negatively affect you, although I should have known better. _

_Rye told me what happened, as I'm sure he's told you, and I'm sorry this message hasn't come sooner. I'm not sure what Rye's told you, but I didn't mean to offend you in any way by not returning your messages or his. I need space, as I'm sure you understand better than anyone. Breaking ties with our mother unfortunately meant losing the rest of you in the process. I wish I had realized what I was doing by leaving you hanging when I think we can both agree that Rye and Dad don't really understand. I've thought about this a lot in the week since you left home. We've never been the closest – that used to be me and Rye, and more recently you and Rye – but correct me if I'm wrong that we do share this._

_I'm not coming back. I'm sure you've realized this. I no longer think of her as my mother and have no hard feelings leaving her behind. I have my problems with Dad and Rye as well, but I'm glad that you have them to turn to for now. _

_I haven't been there for you in the past and, to be completely honest with you, I can't with a good conscience tell you that I'll be at your beck and call now either. We both know that we're on completely different paths. I'm happy with the life I'm living and I know you're happy with Katniss. I can tell you that I'll keep you in my thoughts and hope that Rye sticks by you. That's the only thing I can do from here._

_Good luck in your future endeavors. _

_-Leaven_

I reread it two, three, four times before throwing my head against the back of the couch. I don't know what I was exactly expecting but the brotherly equivalent of a Dear John letter was not it. My eyes scan the email for the fifth time. Problems with Dad and Rye? What have I missed? My entire life the cause of dysfunction has been Mother – Mother against Leaven, Mother against me, Mother against Dad, Mother doting on Rye.

Leaven's right – we aren't that close. When it came to fighting while we were growing up it was usually Rye pulling us off each other. Rye was always so much bigger than me so antagonizing him was never in my best interest. As for Leaven, he was closer to me in age and we butted heads a lot because of it.

I'm still looking at the email when the front door opens. I quickly log out and slam the cover of the laptop down, chucking it to the side. I don't know what argument Leaven and Rye are having, but I don't want to be in the middle of it. My sketchbook is close by so I quickly grab that, opening it to a half-finished sketch of Castor and Pollux. I don't have any pencils, but maybe Rye won't notice.

He pulls at his tie as he looks in to see where I am.

"I'm not cooking tonight," he says, leaning against the doorframe. He takes off his suit jacket and throws it over the back of the couch. "You up for pizza?"

Rye walks out of the room to make the call after I nod and I let out a breath I was all too aware I was holding.

"We have to go get it in fifteen," Rye shouts from the kitchen. "I'm gonna change and then we can go."

I let out another breath. I thought our family had already self-destructed. Apparently, there are still more bonds yet to break.

* * *

The drive to Miner Falls is familiar but I'm filled with an odd sense of numbness. It's not like going home after a vacation or a semester at school. As I exit the highway and turn down country roads, my eyes take in the fields of horses and cows, remembering the brightness with which Prim took everything in when I brought her here three years ago. I wish I felt the same. Instead, I feel anxious as I pass Cray's filling station and the volunteer fire department.

My stomach bubbles unpleasantly as I see the big green state sign that reads "MINER FALLS" with an arrow that points down the main road into town. I pull the truck down the strip of gravel road that leads to Main Street. This is home. This is where I grew up. I see the McCourt boys playing stickball outside of the florist shop and I remember when my brothers, the Donner boys, and I would do that in the street on lazy summer days when we weren't needed at the shops.

But, at the same time, this doesn't feel like home.

I pull the truck in around the back of the bakery. Rye insisted that I leave mine in Roanoke, claiming that since the truck is the same age as me it shouldn't be doing these back and forth trips so often. Instead, he handed me the keys to his Silverado. In some ways, it's a good thing. The Silverado will provide me with a little anonymity for a few minutes. My truck is known as a Mellark vehicle and, while it won't take long for everyone to realize the truck with Virginia plates parked at the Donners' must be me, driving Rye's means I won't get hounded immediately.

Dad already has everything I'll need to start the cake laid out on the counter when I walk in. He looks up from where he's decorating a tray of cookies and gives me a warm smile before setting the decorator's bag down and holding his arms out for me. I don't hesitate to fall into them like I would when I was little.

"How's Roanoke?" he asks when I sit down on the other side of the table.

Prim went fancy this year and asked for red velvet, something she'd seen on a cooking show and asked if I knew how to make. When I told her that a lot of our wedding parties order at least one layer of red velvet, she was so excited. I start mixing ingredients while I answer my dad.

"Fine," I say.

He nods and goes back to decorating. "What have you been up to?"

"Drawing. Looking at what I have to do for graduate school. I went to church with Rye on Sunday." I shrug. "That's pretty much it."

We fall into a comfortable silence while we work. It's like old times, except my mind is racing at a million miles an hour. I'm waiting for my mother to barge in because someone's seen the truck out back and has put two and two together. I think about Leaven's email and try to think of reasons he would have to be mad at Dad or Rye.

So I guess it isn't _exactly_ comfortable, but Dad doesn't say anything.

The most time consuming part of making Prim's cake is adding the details and decorations. By the time I'm finished, the cake is covered in primroses of all different colors and I've added some latticework around the sides. The sun is setting by the time I finish and I close up shop with Dad. He makes us each a sandwich from the end of a loaf of focaccia bread for dinner. I notice that he eats slowly. I'm leaving for the Donners' when he finishes.

While he takes his time – my food already being digested – my eyes find the set of duffle bags on the ground by the backdoor. My things have been packed away into three large duffle bags that will be placed in the back of Rye's truck and taken back to Virginia with me. Looking at them makes my heart pound.

"I put your school stuff in a couple boxes."

I turn back to my father, who is wiping his mouth with a napkin, his sandwich finished. It only takes so long to eat. He couldn't make it last forever.

"I figured you can grab that in August," he says. "No need lugging all of that to Roanoke."

As we throw the bags in the truck, the wind howls in the early night. The stars light up the darkness. After dark, the only lights in Miner Falls come through home windows and from the sky. We don't have streetlamps and most people don't leave once they settle in for the night.

Dad hits the side of the truck with his palm once we hoist everything inside. "Well, I'll see you in the morning."

I nod and slip into the driver's seat. The truck's headlights intrude on the calm night around us.

Once I'm off Main Street, I pull up into the residential area. The Donners live two streets up the hill from us in a house very similar to my parents' and everyone else's. It's got a front porch with a couple wicker rocking chairs. The roof is made of rusting tin and, as I'm sure any of the houses would, it would fail any sort of state inspection. It's an old miner's house that moves with the winds and shakes in the snow, but it belongs to them. That's all anyone in Miner Falls cares about.

I let myself in as I've done since I was young. The house is full of the pleasant noises of family life. Pots clang in the kitchen. I hear a loud groan in the next room. I take my shoes off and wander in. Hersh has his arms raised in the air while his younger brother cradles his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees, his body looking like he's in some sort of miserable pain. I let my eyes wander to the TV screen and roll my eyes. Reese must have just lost at Madden.

"Hey," I call out. Hersh turns around and puts his arms down.

"Peet!" he says. "Come teach the little sucker how to play."

As I walk toward them, Hersh wraps his arm around Reese's neck and pulls him into a headlock. Reese is a year younger than Prim and seems to have gone under a growth spurt since the last time I've seen him. The boy is all limbs, just like Hersh when we were fifteen, and he's got the trademark signs of teenager – hair that's a smidge too long, a few pimples here or there.

Reese glares. "I do know how to play, you fucker."

And the mouth of a sailor.

"Reese Donner, that better not have come out of your mouth!"

He rolls his eyes when footsteps echo through the small house toward the living room. Luanne Donner stands in the doorway, her hands on her hips, and her eyebrows raised to her hairline. "You want me to wash your mouth out with a bar of soap? I did it to your brothers, I'll do it to you too," she says.

Then she turns to me, walking over. "And _you_, coming in this house and not telling me," she teases, leaning down to kiss my cheek.

"I just got here, I promise."

She chuckles and pats my cheek. "How was the trip? That drive must be awful long."

I nod. "Yeah, it's not one you want to make every day."

"And how's your daddy?" she asks. I tell her that he was fine, his normal quiet self, and she nods. "He was so excited that you was comin' up. All the man could talk about all week was you."

"Ma, don't make his ego any bigger than it already is," Hersh teases.

She smacks Hersh lightly on the back of the head. "Hush up, you," she says before kissing the top of his head. "Now, I gotta get back. I left Delly in the kitchen all lonely."

"Delly's here?" I ask as she leaves.

Hersh nods and jerks his head toward the kitchen. "She and Ma were going to make a whole feast in your honor before I convinced them that you were coming from a bakery and didn't need it." He's right. I'm full. "But, you know them, they have a whole plate of fried chicken for you and Delly's making nanner puddin."

Hersh's mother makes the best fried chicken in Miner Falls and she always makes it when Delly and I come over. Banana pudding, called nanner puddin around here, happens to be my favorite dessert, as well as the most common dessert in Miner Falls. You can't go to a potluck around here without at least five families making a plate of it.

Reese snorts and presses a few buttons on his controller. "Ma's making a bigger feast for you than she did for Hersh when he came back."

"I know," Hersh whines. Then he turns and winks. "All I got was collard greens because she said I put on a few."

I lean over the couch and pat his belly before he pushes me to the ground. He wrestles me and sits on my stomach. I'm just about to flip him over when I hear a squeal of excitement. Delly Cartwright. She may be compact in height, but she makes up for it in personality. She pushes Hersh right off me, making Reese laugh, and launches onto me.

"Peeta! I'm so happy to see you!" she says.

"It's nice to see you too, Del," I say. Her blonde curls are pulled back into a ponytail and her face doesn't look quite so round as it had when I saw her last Christmas. She's still small and curvy, but she's fit. She looks good. "You've been working out?"

She grins. "I'm so glad you noticed," she says before turning toward Hersh and glaring. "At least one of you remembers what I look like when I come back."

"Jeez, Del, I'm sorry," Hersh hisses. "I didn't notice what you looked like because I was being smothered by you, alright? It's hard to look when all I can see is your hair in my face!"

She rolls her eyes and turns back toward me. I ask her how her semester went, since I didn't have much of a chance to talk to her the last time I'd seen her. "It was great. And I hear you're going to be a teacher too now," she says. Then her broad smile falls. "I'm so sorry about what your mother said."

I wonder how much my dad told her. If he told her that my mother insinuated that she wanted us to date or if he just told her about the teacher bit. She doesn't say anything else, of which I'm grateful. I love Delly and she's one of my best friends, but I'm in love with Katniss. Dating Delly would be like dating my sister and I think she feels the same way as me on that topic.

"It's fine," I say. "She's stupid."

She stands up and holds out a hand to help me off my back. "I think you'll make a great teacher, by the way."

"Thanks."

"Oh, and I didn't tell you!" she says, looping her arm with mine as she leads me into the kitchen. Hersh follows behind us, leaving Reese with the video game. "Guess who I talked to at the bonfire!"

"Delly, if I have to hear about this one more time – "

"Hersh, shut up," she says, turning around and pointing her finger at him. "I listen to you talk about the girls you hook up with all the time."

Hersh rolls his eyes. "Yeah, but at least you don't know any of them," he says. "Thom's one of my brother's best friends! This is weird."

"Thom?" I ask.

Delly ignores Hersh and turns to me with a nod. "We're taking a walk on Saturday."

I can see where Hersh is coming from – Thom was in the friend group with Leaven and Hersh's second oldest brother – but he's a nice enough guy. Thom's father is a mechanic and, instead of heading to college, Thom stayed working there. He's also a big member of the volunteer fire department. My mother wouldn't approve of him because his family lives close to the old mine, but I've always liked him. Delly's never had a boyfriend before though, so I don't want her to get hurt, especially since Thom – if he's interested in her like she obviously is for him – will be in Miner Falls and Delly will head back to school at the end of the summer.

"Well, don't get hurt," I say softly. "Because then Hersh and I'll have to beat him up."

_And I really don't want to do that because the guy is a giant and I think that even two-on-one wouldn't hurt him_ goes unsaid.

Delly laughs and pats my arm. "My heroes," she says sarcastically before rolling her eyes and letting go of my arm so she can grab the plates.

* * *

I make good time on the road and arrive in front of the Abernathy-Everdeen house about a half-hour before the guests arrive. Prim's party starts at two and by the time I arrive the front lawn is covered in decorations. It takes me a minute to move because I'm imagining Katniss and Haymitch putting all of this together. The light pole is covered in pink streamers with balloons. Above the door they have a banner that reads _Happy Birthday_! I grab the cake and walk up to the house, ringing the doorbell with my nose.

Prim answers the door dressed to the nines. I feel infinitely underdressed until I see Haymitch walking down the hallway in a pair of jeans that look like they could be older than me. I feel better after that. Prim wraps her arms around my waist and I lift the cake up over my head so she doesn't hit it. Luckily, it's not huge and heavy or the cake probably would have ended up on the floor.

"Come on, you can put it on the table," Prim says, leading me out to the backyard.

Haymitch's geese have been penned and they are squawking loudly at their lost freedom. "Oh, shut up," he's saying when Prim and I walk out. He tosses the birds some bread and the noise quiets for a minute.

"Wow, Prim," I say, pointing to all the decorations. It looks like Party Palace threw up all over the yard, with streamers and balloons and decorations. There are so many cardboard sixteens everywhere I can't keep track. "Looks like you went all out."

Prim smiles sheepishly at me. "This was all Katniss and Haymitch," she says. "I didn't need all of this."

At the mention of Katniss, I look around for her but she's not in the yard. It's just the three of us out here. I turn back to Prim and she kicks the toe of her shoe into the dirt.

"Katniss is in her room," she says softly. "She's not having a good day."

I give Prim a hug before walking back into the house and up the stairs. Katniss's door is closed and I knock lightly before opening it. She's curled up under the covers, holding a stuffed goat to her chest. Prim gave her that when Katniss was in the hospital during one of her rounds of chemo and now Katniss even brings Lady the goat to college with her. It helps her feel close to Prim.

I sit gingerly on the side of the bed and she looks up at me, her eyes flooded with tears. The only thing I can think to do is wipe the wet tracks already on her face with the pad of my thumb. She lets out a shaky breath and then hugs the goat tighter.

"What's wrong?"

Katniss swallows a lump and I can see it move down her throat. "I always ruin Prim's big days. She turned thirteen and I was sick." She sniffles and blinks back tears. "She graduates to upper school and I've got my transplant. And now she's turning sixteen and I can't feel my legs from the knees down."

The peripheral neuropathy that Katniss acquired as a side effect of a specific chemotherapy drug sometimes leaves Katniss without feeling in her limbs. Other times, her nerves are literally on fire and even the slightest touch of a sheet against her skin can cause her to scream out in pain. Once she was taken off the chemo, she regained the functioning of her nerves, but it comes and goes. It's infrequent that she's anything less than normal. This is her first episode in more than six months. Unfortunately, her nerves couldn't have picked a worse day to misbehave.

"How are your hands?" I ask. I stroke the back of her hand as she holds onto Lady. Her fingers look like they might be a little numb too by their positioning. She's holding onto the goat with her palms.

She shrugs. "Fine. I can deal without my hands. Without my feet I can't walk," she tells me bitterly. "And I tried and I fell and Prim got upset and I'm ruining her day. Because that's what I do."

"Oh, come on."

"I'm a life ruiner," she mumbles. "Just ask my mother."

The room goes silent. I don't even think Katniss wanted that to come out of her mouth. It puts me into motion. I was all set to curl up in bed with her and let her wallow today – I could wallow with her – because, yes, it does suck that it always seems to be Prim's special days where Katniss has some major problem. But, Katniss has to realize that it's not her fault, that there are plenty of other days – not just Prim's days – where Katniss hurts. And there are plenty of special days for Prim where Katniss is perfectly fine. But, most importantly, it hurts to hear her blame herself for her parents's deaths because that's definitely not her fault.

I'd like to believe that there is some rhyme or reason to the events we endure.

"Alright," I say, standing up and looking down at her. "Are you dressed?"

Katniss looks at me in confusion. "What?"

I look her over. The sleeve of her shirt is definitely a pajama shirt although I'm not familiar with the pajamas she wears at home. At school she usually wears one of my shirts. I turn and walk to her closet, rustling through the hangers.

"What are you doing?" she asks.

When I turn back toward her, she's pushed up on her elbow to stare at me. "What do you want to wear today?"

Katniss glares at me. "I'm not getting dressed."

"Alright." I grab her go-to outfit, which is my flannel shirt that she stole during fall semester finals, an undershirt, and a pair of leggings from her dresser. That's when I pause. I haven't seen Katniss's undergarments before and I'm not just haphazardly grabbing those without her permission. "I don't know what else you need."

Katniss could lose her face in a bag of strawberries her face is so red. "Oh, um. Top drawer," she mumbles. "Just grab...whatever."

I grabbed a black undershirt so I figure I should probably grab a black bra, but I've never had to pick before so what would I know? I see a black one and take it, but not before I see she has a very nice looking one with lacy details. I lift it up and raise my eyebrows, knowing it will rile her up. I'm not disappointed by her reaction.

"Stop," she whines, but she smiles. "That was for _you_."

My eyebrows find shelter in my hair. "Me?"

She nods. Any red on her face has now morphed into a striking shade of plum. I've never seen anyone turn so many shades of color with embarrassment before.

"Well, for next semester, hopefully," she mutters. "If we ever make it far enough for you to see it."

I put it back because if I don't I'm going to lose control. My heart is beating erratically now that I have this visual and a lot of the blood is going somewhere I really don't want it to go right now – or ever when Haymitch could walk in any minute. That thought effectively fixes my almost problem, but to avoid anything else like that happening, I reach in blind and grab the first piece of underwear my fingers touch and chuck them across the room. At least Katniss finds my sudden embarrassment funny. She always finds it amusing when I'm self-conscious about things that usually embarrass her and not me.

My back remains toward her while she changes, but after a few minutes I hear small noises. Maybe this was a bad idea. "Katniss, are you okay?"

"I just...I can't do this."

"What's the matter?" I wince. I know what's wrong. Her fingers are probably too numb. "Do you want me to get Prim?"

"Um, no," she says. I hear a grunt and a frustrated sigh before an almost nervous and shaky breath is sucked in. "Could you...help me?"

Katniss absolutely hates asking for help so I know she's struggling if she's asking. When I turn, she's facing the wall with her arms over her chest and her braid placed over the shoulder where her port scar is located. Aside from the two sides of her unclasped bra, her back is bare. And it is beautiful.

"Now, this is my first time buckling a bra, so don't laugh at me if I suck at it," I tell her.

It makes her laugh and that's all the encouragement I need to walk forward and try my best. It's not too hard to figure out and I let my finger trace a little of her spine before I step away. She pulls the undershirt on before turning around, her port scar effectively covered from my view, and puts her arms through the flannel. There is no way she's getting those buttons, but she usually doesn't button them anyway, preferring to let it stay open. Her fingers are numb – I can tell from the way she grabs at the shirt and struggles.

She looks down at my feet. "Could you help with the leggings too?"

I remind myself that this is no different to seeing Katniss in a bathing suit bottom – although I never have since we've never gone swimming together – and then I rationalize that it's just like really short shorts – which Katniss doesn't really wear. I'm thinking of dead puppies the entire time I help her put her feet in through the holes, bunching it up like my dad used to do with socks when I was younger, and then pulling them up her legs like you would a baby. She wouldn't have been able to do this with her fingers – whoever came up with the idea of these didn't take into consideration girls who can't control their fingers enough to grab the material and pull on it.

"Okay, I'm dressed," Katniss says when we finish. "Now what?"

At least a few of Prim's guests have arrived because I can hear them through Katniss's window. I kneel down in front of her bed and smirk to myself. "Climb on," I tell her. "I'm your personal mule for the day."

"You're kidding?" she says, her voice tinged with a few disbelieving giggles.

"It's not like you weigh too much," I scoff. "I've lifted bags of flour heavier than you."

Katniss wraps her arms around my neck in a way so she doesn't have to use her fingers to keep from falling off. Since she can't feel her legs, I lift her enough so I can put my arms under her knees and then stand up all the way and walk away from her bed. She kisses my cheek as we walk down the stairs.

"Have I told you lately that you're too good for me?"

I roll my eyes. "I'm not good at anything except being hopelessly in love with you," I say. My mother would be the first to second that statement.

Katniss rests her head on my shoulder, kissing my neck before nuzzling it with her nose. "We can continue this heart-to-heart after Prim's party. I don't want her getting the wrong idea."

This makes me burst into laughter. "Do you honestly think that a pretty girl like Prim is going to end up being a crazy cat lady?"

"They aren't all crazy!" Katniss exclaims as we step out the backdoor. "Besides, she likes cats and that would be preferable to her getting her heart broken –"

"Katniss!"

Prim comes running over. The yard is full of teenagers, but the only two I recognize are Rue and Rory, who are leaning against the fence. Haymitch is standing on the other side of the yard with Sae, Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne, and little Posy who definitely isn't little anymore. Prim looks to have been making the rounds to a few different groups before she came running over.

"Are you feeling better?" Prim asks, her eyes widening as if she's just seen a miracle.

Katniss rests her head against my cheek. "Yep, much better than this morning," she lies. She's a terrible liar, but Prim doesn't care. The fact that Katniss is out of bed is enough for her. The blonde squeals and wraps her arms around the two of us before going over to Rue and Rory. I walk the two of us over toward the adult crew.

Haymitch runs a finger along the bottom of her bare foot, as if he's trying to tickle her, as soon as we're close enough. His face remains blank when she doesn't react.

"How you feeling, sweetheart?" he asks.

Katniss rests her chin on me and gives a noncommittal shrug of her shoulders. There is no point in her lying to Haymitch like she did with her sister. She might as well be a pane of glass to him. I continue to watch him as Hazelle catches Katniss's attention and asks if she wants to sit at the table with her and Sae.

Posy tugs on Katniss's ankle. "Come on, Kat!" she says with a broad smile. "I wanna draw you a picture!"

I set Katniss down on the picnic table's bench next to Hazelle before walking back to Haymitch and Mr. Hawthorne. They each have a beer in hand, talking about something as I approach. However, whatever conversation they're having seems to halt when Haymitch notices me coming back over and he nods his head toward the picnic table.

"How'd you get her out the damn bed?" he asks. "When I tried I just got scowled at."

My face heats thinking about how I partially dressed Katniss and I try to make my face as unsuspicious as possible. Katniss may not be Haymitch's biological daughter, but sometimes blood isn't everything. Haymitch would have no problems laying me flat if I hurt her, just as he would do to someone who hurt Prim. They're his girls.

So instead I shrug. "I just talked to her." A little white lie never hurt anyone.

"You need to come in pill form," he mutters.

I smile but don't reply. It's the type of statement that's supposed to be a joke but no one really finds funny, Haymitch included. In fact, I think Haymitch finds it the least humorous. In some ways, it seems like Katniss takes more medication now than she did when she was in the hospital. The IVs seemed intense and scary, but the number of orange pill bottles with her name on the label is even scarier. Dr. Aurelius, her psychiatrist, prescribes antidepressants and antianxiety meds. Dr. Paylor, her neurologist, has her on an anti-seizure medication called Tegretol because it helps keep her nerves from hurting her, and sends her to Finnick for physical therapy. She is also on hormone therapy to maintain her cycle and a different regimen to help with thyroid issues caused by the chemotherapy.

There are a lot of things they don't show you in the movies about surviving cancer. Katniss fought off and on for thirteen years but the high doses of chemotherapy and radiation that ultimately saved her life have made other parts of her body dysfunctional. She has to eat a certain diet, she has a hard time keeping weight on, and she has trouble concentrating on tasks like her homework. It's not always over when the doctor says remission.

That's the catch-22 that no one ever talks about.

"Well," Haymitch says, letting out a breath and taking a pull from his beer. "I'm glad she listened to someone. Prim will be thrilled."

"How's her project going?" Mr. Hawthorne asks.

Haymitch taps his fingers along the glass. "She's done almost all the work. I'm just doing the tax forms and that kind of stuff," he says. Then he turns to me. "Blondie is creating a run for PCH in September since that's Childhood Cancer Month."

"Wow, really?"

He looks every bit the proud guardian when he nods his head. "I don't know where she gets it from," he says. "Her sister and I are about as useless as bumps on a log."

Mr. Hawthorne nudges his arm. "Well, she's gotta keep at it. She's got college applications to think about."

"_To _think about? That kid's been thinking about nursing school since she was twelve," Haymitch says. "I stumbled upon a binder in her room a few weeks ago – one of those big ones, full of college information she'd printed at school from the internet. Her list of schools is about sixty places long."

"Rory's the same way."

I look up at Mr. Hawthorne. "Where does Rory want to go?"

He shrugs and his jaw tenses slightly. "Ah, he'll probably just apply to State. You're finding it's a good experience, right?"

"Yeah, it's been great. What's he planning to study?"

At this, Mr. Hawthorne rolls his eyes. "The kid's convinced he wants to be an oncologist. Has been since Gale." He turns to look at Rory, who Prim is introducing to one of her classmates. "I keep trying to tell him it might not be a good idea. I mean, it's not that he's not smart enough to do the work, he's determined as hell, but I just think it'd be hard for him, you know? Dealing with it everyday again."

I always forget that the Hawthornes lost Gale on first glance. They just seem so happy and loving all the time. I suppose it has been almost six years since Gale's death and I don't see them that often. I'm sure they have their moments, but the Hawthornes always seem steady.

I wish my family acted more like them.

The party flies by. Prim opens present after present and then cuts the cake. Everyone seems to enjoy it and the sun is setting when everyone heads home. Rue is spending the night, so the two giggling girls rush up to Prim's room after the party to talk while Haymitch, Katniss, and I take to cleaning the yard. Although, it's more Haymitch cleaning since Katniss is on my back and we're not really getting any work done.

Once the yard is deemed presentable we make our way inside. Prim and Rue are just putting in a movie in the family room, so the three of us join in. Haymitch takes to his armchair with a glass of scotch and Katniss and I fall into a different chair since Rue and Prim are on the couch. Katniss rests her head on my chest as Prim skips through the previews and Haymitch openly groans when he sees the movie they picked.

"The original was better," he says. "The only reason you want to see it is because of the kid that plays Robert."

Prim puts her finger to her lips. "It's starting."

To be honest, I don't really watch most of the movie. I use my thumb to rub circles in Katniss's palm and we make eye contact in the darkness. Katniss turns her head on my chest and kisses it through my shirt. I kiss the top of her head in response. Most of the movie goes unwatched as we make faces to each other. I hate that I only have a few more hours left with her before I leave and most of those will be spent sleeping.

Once the movie ends, Prim and Rue head upstairs, giggling about _how cute_ the boys are in the film with Haymitch walking behind them, saying that the point of the movie wasn't for teenage girls to fangirl. Katniss chuckles softly.

"Should I be jealous?" I ask.

"Are you asking me if I agree with Prim and Rue?" She smirks at me. "Well, I don't know, Peeta. I think you would have competition if we were stuck with those guys, especially the one that the girls liked. What was his name again?"

I pretend to pout and she sticks out her tongue. "I'm just kidding."

My lips find her temple. "I know."

We stare at each other for a few minutes and then she sighs and nuzzles my chest. "I don't want you to go," she says.

"I don't want to either."

"Then don't." She lifts her head, her eyes wide. "I'll hide you in my room."

"I'm sure Haymitch would be thrilled."

Katniss reaches her hand up and drags her fingers against my face. It's an odd feeling because they're still numb to her and she just ends up pulling the skin on my cheek.

"Why do you have to go to Roanoke?" she whispers as her hand drops back down to her side.

I let out a breath and put my hand on the back of my neck. "My mother and I just got into a fight. It's not that big of a deal."

"You're living in Virginia for three months. That's a big deal," she replies. "What did she say?"

My mind flits back to the argument. It's so stupid. I'm so stupid for letting her wind me up like that. I should have ignored her. I could have just gone to Hersh's or stormed upstairs. Instead, I'm ruining everything – one of my last summers with Dad, time with Katniss, seeing my friends from home.

"Peeta, look at me." I do as she says. Katniss is staring at me, her eyes full of concern but her mouth controlled by a scowl. "Do you know how hard it is for me to ask for help, like today, when I couldn't even get dressed?" I nod my head. "I asked because I love you and I trust you and I know that you would do anything for me to make me feel on top of the world. Do you feel the same way about me?"

"Yes," I say before I can even think about it.

"Then let me in," she states. "I want to help you. I want to know what's wrong. Please?"

"It's stupid," I say.

"But it's hurting you," she says. "So it can't be that stupid."

I let out another breath and then chew on my lip for a second, thinking about what to say. I'm nervous for her reaction. I don't want to make her upset in anyway or trigger a thought about her own mother. And there is no way that I'm telling her what my mother said about Delly.

So, I start benign. "Well, I guess it starts in Miami. She literally would not stop talking about Rye and Leaven got mad. And then she insulted his work and he left." My heart is pounding in my chest and my throat is full. "She was quiet for while and I went to hang out with Hersh and Delly, and when I came back she said some things to me and it escalated rapidly until she...I told her I wanted to be a teacher and she told me that it was women's work. And she laughed, saying I could never do anything right."

Katniss doesn't say anything and I look down. I suck in a breath with my nose and it sounds like a sniffle. My eyes are wet. I am not crying about my mother in front of Katniss. I swallow the lump in my throat.

"And it's true. I can't do anything right."

"Peeta, no," Katniss says. "What she said was awful."

I wrap my arms around her. I want to keep hold of her until we have to go to sleep. This is the one thing I know I can do well. I can love. Katniss rests her forehead in the crook of my neck. We stay like this for a long time until my neck starts to get stiff and I pick her up so we can move to the couch. I lay down with Katniss on top of me.

"Shut your eyes," she says.

The lights of the room are still off from the movie and closing my eyes causes my world to collapse into blackness. Katniss starts humming in my ear, an old soothing lullaby I remember my father used to sing to us. It's a traditional folk song from Miner Falls that I've never heard anywhere else. I can barely remember the lyrics, but the tune is familiar.

My breathing slows and I'm fighting consciousness, caught between states of awareness and sleep, when one line of the lyrics pops in my head. "Here is the place where I love you," it sings. I've never heard the voice before but it sounds familiar. My body encases in the warmth of the song and I slip under.

* * *

When I wake up, there is a blanket draped over me. Katniss is also still in her position on top of me, her legs falling to either side of my body, her chest and stomach smack against mine, her head tucked under my chin. I look across the room to the DVD player. It's about ten in the morning and I can smell the scents of breakfast coming through the house.

I wrap my arms around Katniss's light frame and she stirs, blinking a few times before smiling up at me.

"I missed waking up like this," she says.

"Me too."

"Can you stay here instead of Roanoke?" she asks, even though we both know the answer to that.

"I'm pretty sure that would be overstaying Haymitch's welcome," I say. "Come on, let's get you upstairs so you can change. How are you feeling?"

She squeezes her hands and I can feel her toes wiggling near my calves. "I've got most of it back, but you can still carry me if you want," she says with a smirk.

I roll my eyes, pretending that she's putting me out for a minute before she playfully slaps my chest. I lift us both up and help her move to my back. I don't mind carrying Katniss. The longer we're connected the better, in my opinion. I want to be able to savor every moment we have with each other while we're apart.

Katniss changes in her room while I take the bathroom. Prim and Rue must already be awake because when I peek my head into her room no one is in there. I carry Katniss on my back down the stairs and through the house. Haymitch is standing near the griddle with a spatula when we walk into the kitchen. Prim and Rue each have a plate with pancakes.

"How you feeling, sweetheart?" he asks as I let Katniss slide down my back. Her bare feet hit the floor with a slap and he turns with a smile. "You all set?"

She nods her head and sits down at one of the stools at the island. Haymitch reaches into the cupboard and hands her pill organizer. She opens the one that says "SUN" and takes the pills out before handing it back.

Katniss turns to Prim and Rue. "You mean, he hasn't poisoned you with those yet?"

"Yep, the diva's back," Haymitch says. "Ask your sister. I'm learning."

Prim nods her head. "Hazelle gave him a recipe book because we feel bad when Sae cooks for us all the time," she says. "We've been learning together."

"Then how come you haven't cooked since I've been home?" Katniss asks. She looks at him skeptically. "Have you been holding out on me?"

Haymitch rolls his eyes and takes some of the pancake batter on the fork and launches it at her, making her scowl. "I was saving it for when the boy showed up," he says. "I figured you'd shut that goddamn trap of yours when he was here, but apparently not."

Rue and I both sneak a glance at each other before chuckling quietly. Prim rolls her eyes at the banter back and forth. Breakfast continues in a similar fashion. For the remainder of the day, Katniss and I just enjoy being together. We turn on another movie and only make it a few minutes in before we're not paying attention again. We talk. We kiss. We cuddle. And the time to leave comes all too quickly.

Rue hops into passenger's side of my truck and I turn back toward Katniss once more before sliding in. I offered to give Rue a ride back on my way back to Virginia. It's not too far out of the way, just an extra loop instead of taking I-77 straight out of the capitol. It adds about an hour, so I'll be on the road for four instead of three, but despite our age difference I think of Rue as a great friend and I feel like I haven't gotten the chance to talk to her in a while.

"Are you sure you don't want me to put a blow up mattress in my closet?" Katniss asks as she wraps her arms around my waist. She's only partially serious in her question.

I kiss the top of her head and put on a smile even though I don't want to leave either.

"Remember, don't hesitate to call me if you need to talk," she says. "I love you."

"I love you too," I tell her. "More than anything else in the world."

She hesitates before she speaks again, as if she doesn't know if she should say it or not. "Your mother is wrong," she says. I put my hands on either side of her face so we can look each other in the eye. "You're wonderful and if she can't see that she's blind."

"You're not one to talk," I tease, using my thumbs to tap her eyebrows, referring to the fact that she needs glasses to read. She rolls her eyes, but the depth of her words hit me. I needed that. I needed Katniss to accept me after my mother's biting words. So I tell her. "Thank you."

"I'm just being honest," she says. She grabs my shoulders and lifts herself up so she can kiss me. I keep kissing her until we have to pull apart for oxygen and even then I don't want to separate. I kiss her forehead and unwillingly let go. "Call me when you get to Rye's."

I nod and hop in next to Rue. We wave as we pull out and within seconds Katniss, Prim, and Haymitch disappear.

"It's going to be a long summer for you, isn't it?" Rue asks as we merge onto the highway.

"You have no idea."

* * *

June passes by at a snail's pace. I'm so used to being busy and constantly on the go that, with nothing to do, I begin to go stir crazy. If I was at home, I'd be taking shifts at the bakery every day, and when I wasn't there I'd be headed to the capitol to volunteer at PCH and see Katniss. But I'm not in Miner Falls. I'm in Roanoke.

By the end of June, I'm beginning to feel like a modern Henry David Thoreau. I spend a lot of time outside with my sketchbook with nothing but my pencils and my thoughts. It's soothing and a good outlet.

At first, the pages fill with the images around me. The Blue Ridge Mountains. The Roanoke Star. The architecture on the buildings. However, as the pages go on, the images begin to change. I draw Katniss, Prim, Rue, the kids from PCH, but it doesn't stop there. I draw the one person I've never drawn before.

My mother.

I shade in her features as she screams, her inexistent words lifting off the page to attack me. Slowly but surely the images fade from reality and spiral into blurry fantasies and illusions. Some are good, where I see the mother I always wanted. She wears a broad smile and holds me in her arms as if I could do no wrong. Other pictures, though, show her words physically destroying Leaven and me. Rye and my father debut in some of them, either watching from a corner of a page or attempting to fight their way in between us.

Rye and Lux aren't home very often, especially during the week. They both work full time at their companies and then on top of that they're taking courses toward their MBA degrees. There are nights when I fall asleep with the two of them still not home or both are working in the office they have on the first floor.

I debate emailing Leaven back, just to tell him that I received his message, but every time I start to compose an email, my fingers rest on the keys without actually pressing any of them. Then I exit out of the window and do something else. I decided to stay away from Facebook – seeing the pictures my friends post from home just make me homesick. Every once in a while I'll stray over there when they send me an email about pending notifications. _Hersh Donner tagged you in a post. Primrose Everdeen tagged you in a picture. Delly Cartwright wrote on your timeline. _

Katniss and I talk all the time. We're constantly texting each other and we Skype or call on the phone a few times a week. She doesn't bring up my mother, for which I'm grateful. Although I'm glad I told her about it and it was a good way to get it off my chest, my mother is still a topic I don't want to talk about yet. Part of it is because it hurts. I'm a fairly well liked guy, but my own mother can't stand me. What does that say about me?

Another part, one that is so ridiculous I'm not sure if my head is serious or not, is that she won. I never wanted to leave Miner Falls. I knew I would eventually, like my father said there is nothing there for me, but she always hated it. And now she's in town, with my dad and my friends, and I can't go back because she'll be there and Dad doesn't want any more confrontations between us.

It's around the middle of July that I start getting angry at my dad.

For the most part, it's uncalled for anger and that's what makes me more upset. He's doing everything in his power to help both of us and I don't want him to have to pick sides, but it doesn't stop me taking my pencil to paper and drawing him. I draw him as the devil one day. I draw him with two people on his shoulders – me and my mother, an angel and a devil in disguise. Only, the more I draw these images, the more frequent it is becoming that I'm the devil on his shoulder, not the angel.

And maybe my mother's right. Maybe I can't do anything right. Obviously, if I'm drawing these pictures, I can't be a great person. I love my dad. He's been more of a mother to me than my mother ever has, but I don't understand why she gets to keep him. He only calls occasionally and I tell myself that it's because he's terrible with words and phone calls aren't exactly his thing. It doesn't help.

And, on top of everything, Pastor Claudius at Rye's church likes to talk about hope and forgiveness and rekindling relationships lost. And he looks at me. Every time he talks on Sunday, I feel like he's making a lesson out of my life and my choices. It makes me feel like he's trying to fix me. Because I'm broken.

So, I put on a smile. I make sure the people of Roanoke get to know the Peeta Mellark that everyone has always loved. The only respite I get is texting Katniss. She's the only person that I feel is actually there for me all the time. She always has me in her pocket and my texts from her are answered quicker than anyone else's.

It's the first week of August when everything begins to unravel.

Portia sends me an email on the seventh. Castor is not doing well. The tumor in his brain is not only resisting treatment, but it has metastasized to other regions of his body. There is nothing else that they can really do for him and he is entering hospice care. She's unsure of how long he'll still be with us, but that his and Pollux's mother has been asking if I'll be continuing my art classes when I come back from the summer. They all think it might help Pollux in the transition.

I'm still staring at my laptop screen – _I'm so sorry to be telling you this over an email, but I thought you should know_ – when the front door opens and Rye comes in.

"You hungry?"

_Unfortunately, the type of cancer Castor has is one with a very low cure rate. His family has been preparing for it in the backs of their heads for many months..._

"Peeta?"

_...I'll be eager to see you, as will all the kids, back at PCH in September_.

"What the hell is this?"

I turn around to see Rye holding my sketchbook. He's flipping through the pages. That's the last one I bought and it's nearly filled with gray skies and devils and evil fathers and mothers on broomsticks. He looks angry as he rips out the picture of my father with a scythe and throws it onto the couch beside me. He keeps flipping but his face contorts slightly as he goes. His anger lessens into a frown and when he arrives on the last page – a half-finished picture of Pastor Claudius and the whole congregation running after me but my legs are falling off as I run – he frowns.

Rye turns to me with his eyes full of questions. "What's going on?"

My body starts to shake. I turn back toward the letter. _I'm glad to hear that you're having a wonderful time and I'll be eager to see you, as will all the kids, back at PCH in September. _I reread it. _I'm glad to hear that you're having a wonderful time, I'm glad to hear that you're having a wonderful time, I'm glad to hear that you're having a wonderful time. _ Am I? Am I really?

"Peeta, talk to me."

_I'm glad to hear that you're having a wonderful time– _

A hand lands on my shoulder and my head explodes. "Don't touch me!" I scream, leaping off the couch so I'm not within arms reach. I wrap my arms around myself and I pace the floor. "I don't want to talk to you."

Rye blinks and I think he looks angry. His eyes are wide and he's running his hands through his hair, fidgeting because he doesn't know what he wants to do. Maybe he'll kick me out like Dad did when I fought with _Mother_ and I'll be out in Roanoke with nothing.

"Peet, please, I want to help – "

"No, you don't!"

He's so angry now. He storms toward me and puts his hands on my shoulders. I struggle and thrash, but Rye was always the strongest of the three of us. I can't get away. "You can't draw pictures like that and expect me to let you go." I wonder if he'll hit me. Mother never hit me, but I think that's because she was too little. When Rye speaks again, his voice sounds pained. "Why are you drawing that?"

"You don't –"

My voice cracks. I don't want him to be mad at me. I need to have someone on my side. I'm not like Leaven. I thrive on relationships, on people, on being near to those I love. I can't move to a new city with no one and start over.

"I don't what?"

"This is so fucked up," I moan. My throat is clogged with water and slime. I can't breathe.

Rye moves us to the couch and sits me down. I don't want to, but I'm so tired from the thrashing I did earlier that I can't fight him properly. I just let him take me. When I'm sitting, I can feel the cushions shaking under me.

"Peeta, look at me," Rye says. He puts his hands on my cheeks and makes me look at him. "Tell me what's wrong."

I shake my head, but Rye keeps his hands where they are. "Please," he says. "I just want to help you."

"Yeah, like you did Leaven?" I spit.

Rye's eyes widen and he stares at me in shock. He wasn't expecting that. I use the shock to push him off of me, but he's too quick to recover. As I'm attempting to run, he grabs my waist and wrestles me to the ground so he's on top of me, his hands holding mine above my head, his legs trapping mine so I can't move.

"Don't bring Leaven into this," he hisses. And then I explode again.

"You and Dad are going to choose her and I'll have nothing," I scream. "I always have nothing. Just like Leaven! You guys sided with her, I know you did, and you'll side with her now too. Just let me go. No one ever wanted me anyway!"

"Who the fuck told you that no one wanted you?" Rye exclaims.

"I'm just the disappointment. I wasn't a girl. I didn't go to the right school. I didn't fall in love with the person you all wanted me to fall for. I can never do anything right!" I yell. "Everyone knows it."

Rye looks like he's going to vomit all over me. Do I disgust him that much? "Listen to yourself!" he shouts. "You sound crazy!"

"Maybe I am crazy!"

"Shut up!" Rye says. He slams a hand over my mouth, now using only one of his hands to hold both of my arms. To keep me in place he sits on my stomach. His eyes water and I wonder why. "Is this what you've been doing all summer? Living in that head of yours? Well, stop it because none of that bullshit you've come up with is true."

He lets out a few breaths. "You are important. And I know that none of us say it but I'm proud of you. Dad is proud of you. Fuck Ma, okay? Don't let her get to you like this." He lets out another breath. "Okay?"

I just stare.

* * *

Pastor Claudius Templesmith's office is lined with books, some about God and some not. Apparently, the man wasn't always a minister. Rye told me about him on our way over. Before he was called to the church, Claudius Templesmith worked for a Roanoke newspaper. How he decided to change careers I have no idea.

Pastor Claudius sits in front of me and leans back in his chair, clasping his hands together over his stomach. I bite the tip of my tongue.

"So, Peeta," he says. "What are you studying?"

I wasn't expecting that. I figured he'd just jump right in and try to get at my breakdown that I'm positive Rye told him about.

"Biology and education."

He nods but doesn't go to write anything down. He continues to smile. "A teacher? That's a very rewarding career," he says. "What made you choose it?"

I shrug. "I volunteer with kids."

"Yes, your brother told me about that once. A children's hospital, correct?" I nod. "Rye has always spoken very highly of you and what you do for your community."

I don't know what to say, so I don't say anything. Instead, I look around the room again. His left wall is a line of bookshelves and his desk is covered in photo frames. Some are facing toward him but there are a few facing me. His family is beautiful. He and his wife are each sitting with a child on their laps, a boy that's maybe five and a girl a year or so older. They all have white shirts and khaki pants on, broad smiles that mimic the one on his face now. I can't help but think that this is the family my mother wanted. Perfect.

"You have a beautiful family," I say, pointing toward the photograph.

"Thank you." He leans forward and taps his desk. "My wife and I adopted Caleb three years ago and Rachel the year before that."

I look closer at the picture. The two look as if they could be the biological children of Pastor Claudius and his wife. All of them have the same dark hair and similar skin. I never would have known had he not told me. Of course, the same could be said for Katniss and Haymitch.

We sit in silence for a long moment, awkward due to time and circumstance. It's too long for us to sit quietly when we both know the reason why we're here. Of course, I didn't know what we were doing when Rye yanked me out of bed early on a Saturday morning and drove me to the church. It's been two days since the incident. I'm not sure if it was a panic attack or a mental breakdown or what, but I've been avoiding Rye like the plague – not that doing so is too difficult with his work schedule.

The only thing is that I have nothing to say to the pastor. He doesn't know my situation or me in any significant way, and to be honest I don't think I need any help. Now that I have it out of my system, I'm confident that I'll be just fine. My father hasn't called and Rye hasn't brought it up again until today, so I'm perfectly fine pretending that it didn't happen.

"What have you been doing in Roanoke while you're visiting your brother?" he asks.

I shrug. "Drawing."

He nods and looks intrigued again. "Drawing? Really?" I nod my head once. "I've always wished I could draw. It's such an impressive skill. Unfortunately, my skills don't go much deeper than stick figures."

I chuckle at this. That's just like Katniss. She can't draw at all. Pastor Claudius smiles warmly at my laugh and clasps his hands together. "What do you draw usually? People, landscapes?"

"Anything really," I say. "What I'm looking at. Things that are in my head."

"Do you use it as a creative outlet?" he asks. A noncommittal grunt escapes my lips and he continues. "I can imagine it might help if you were feeling homesick."

"I'm not homesick."

That is a blatant and outright lie. There are definitely things that I miss about home. I miss knowing everyone. Miner Falls is so small. We all grow together from birth to death in a cycle. It's like your favorite shirt – something you've grown so comfortable with that you fear the day that it's too worn or small or dirty. Minus my mother, I miss the people that raised me. The saying _it takes a village to raise a child_ is not more fitting to any other town than Miner Falls.

And I miss Katniss. Skype and texts are great and it makes me smile to hear her voice or the vibration of my phone with a new message, but none of that can replace being in her proximity. I miss holding her close. The way she tastes like an addictive elixir. The way her laughter is so musical the real effect comes from watching her actually do it, her body an entire orchestra for a single tune that escapes the speakers of her mouth.

But, more so than any of that, I'm homesick for the life I had because I know, after what's happened, it will never be the same.

"So, tell me more about this drawing that you do," he says, using his hands to speak. He swirls his chair around on the floor. "What's one of your favorites?"

I think about my most recent sketches. Aside from the fantastical images, a few more realistic ones come to mind, specifically one I started yesterday. "Um, the last one I drew was of a kid in the drawing class that I do at the hospital." I grind my teeth when I look up at Pastor Claudius and he's still hanging on my every word. "His name's Pollux and, uh, he has Down syndrome. He's amazing and...his brother's dying of a brain tumor right now. It's hard to think about because they're so close."

Pastor Claudius sighs. "Sometimes it doesn't make sense to us what God's plans are, especially in cases like these," he says, almost to himself rather than to me. Then he looks up and smiles. "Are you close to your brother like Pollux is to his?"

"Not really," I say. "I mean, we never were, at least not until recently. It was always Rye and Leaven growing up and I was always...the third wheel, I guess."

He laughs at my analogy. "I understand. I was the youngest as well," he says. "It's a mixed blessing, isn't it? You get away with murder with your parents, but sometimes being the baby distances you from your siblings."

My face drops. Any ease of conversation the two of us had slipped into vanishes instantly. I've heard that – the baby of the family gets away with murder – but it was always the opposite for us. Rye was the one our mother loved the most, not me. And Dad tried to play peacemaker. He tried to love us all equally. His main goal was to make sure the three of us realized how loved we were because our mother rarely showed it. I bite my lip and look up at him, wondering if he said that to make me talk. When I see his face, the realization dawns on me that he said that to draw me out of my shell, but not about the incident. He looks like he's waiting for me to laugh and say something along the lines of, "yeah, definitely!"

Now I'm confused as to how much Rye told him about our family. I always figured Pastor Claudius knew everything there was to know.

"What did Rye tell you to get you to meet with me?" I ask.

He looks taken aback by my bluntness for a moment and then rubs the back of his neck. "Rye said he was worried that you were having a tough transition," he says. "He said you might need to talk to someone that wasn't him. So, now that you've brought it up, what made you decide to visit for the summer?"

My hands curl into fists in my lap. On the ride over, Rye kept encouraging me to talk through the issues. _Use Pastor Claudius as a resource_. Yet, he's the biggest hypocrite of them all. I wouldn't be surprised if Pastor Claudius thought Miner Falls was full of rainbows and pots of gold the way he's talking to me.

It's the pent up anger at Rye that makes me speak.

"My mother told me that I was worthless for wanting to be a teacher and I left home in the middle of the night to get away. That's why I'm in Roanoke."

The look on his face is almost comical. He recovers quickly and returns his eyebrows to their correct place on his forehead, his eyes become less wide. He wasn't expecting that and I feel bad taking it out on him. He's just a preacher and he has nothing to do with it.

"Well, he didn't tell me that," he says. "Have you always had a poor relationship with your mother or is this more recent?"

"Look, I'm fine with it," I tell him. "It's what I've always known and I don't need any advice. The only reason I'm here is because Rye dragged me out of bed and into the car this morning."

He taps his chin. "What made Rye so concerned now and not when you first arrived?"

"It's not important," I mutter.

"Peeta," he says. "I'm not going to sit here and pretend to be an expert in this sort of thing when I'm not, but from what Rye has told me about you and what I've seen myself these past few months, I have a very hard time imagining that you're an aloof brooding kid who can shrug a comment like that off his shoulders with flippant ease. I rarely see kids your age, adults even, with the strength to do that on their own."

He pauses, as if waiting for me to say something, and when I don't he continues. "You may not want to talk to me or your brother, but you should talk to someone. A close friend, another family member, and remember that you can always speak to God." He shrugs his shoulders. "Or maybe, if you can't talk, draw it and show it to someone you trust."

Right, because when Rye saw my drawings that worked _so_ well.

Pastor Claudius ends our conversation by telling me that his door is open, even after I leave, if I ever need it. I thank him for it, but don't ever plan on taking up the offer. He escorts me to the door, shakes my hand, and then I head out to where Rye is standing in the lobby.

There is a divide between us now unlike any in the past. The tense blanket that encases us came after the incident, after Rye managed to calm me down enough to sit on the couch with the television on for background noise. He watched me like a hawk, probably wanting to make sure I didn't do something stupid. His jaw visibly tightens when he sees me walking down the hallway.

"So, did he help?" he asks as we walk outside. "Do you feel better?"

I blink and stare at Rye, remembering that Pastor Claudius and I spend the majority of our time on different wavelengths, chitchatting about practically nothing.

"No."

Rye groans and I turn to him with a scowl.

"Why didn't he know about what happened in Miner Falls?" Rye doesn't look at me and instead scuffs his shoe against the asphalt when we near his truck. "You keep telling me to talk to people but you don't either."

"Do you think this is easy for me?" Rye says. "Granted, you have it the worst, but do you think I enjoy hearing about what she says to you? I don't, if you thought I did."

"So why didn't you tell the pastor about the actual problem? He thought I was just homesick!"

Rye slams his fist against the hood of a car. "I liked not having people know about her and the shit she does all the time. Why do you think I didn't apply to State? Because she didn't want me to? Bullshit. I went to VT because it was close enough so I could get home if something went wrong, but it was far enough away that I could forget about everything! So, yeah, no one knows about her here because I liked having friends that didn't look at me like I was the one with the crazy mother for once! Lux didn't even know until we were engaged."

I cluck my tongue. "But she likes you."

"Exactly and everyone knows it too," he says. "It's the worst kept secret in town that she played favorites."

We both get into the truck and sit down. The radio remains off and we drive for ten minutes without anything between us besides the background noise of the traffic. He turns to me.

"You hungry?" he asks. He veers off into Sonic before I have a chance to answer.

That's the last time Rye brings up our mother, but the tension remains between us for the rest of the day. I head upstairs and finish the portrait of Pollux, his earbuds in, his eyes closed, his mouth slightly ajar as he hums along with Demi Lovato. Once I finish, I head back downstairs to try and be social, since I haven't really since the incident.

Rye is in the kitchen, a broom in his hand, sweeping a mess under the floor mat near the sink. We used to do that when we were kids at the bakery. Lux calls out for him and he sets the broom down, walking into the den and away from me. Instead of following, I turn around and walk back upstairs.

I'm not even sure what I would've said anyway.

* * *

Labor Day is September second, so classes begin the day after. I spend the day before classes driving from Roanoke to Miner Falls so I can grab the boxes my dad has packed and a hitchhiker named Hersh Donner before heading back to school. I spend the last week of August counting down the hours.

There isn't too much fanfare when I leave. I head out early, close to six, so I'll make it to Miner Falls fairly early. Hersh and I plan to arrive at State by noon so we can hit the lunch break between the morning and the afternoon move-ins. Rye and Lux sleepily wave to me as I back out and then I'm on my way.

Dad has all of my stuff at the bakery, so I don't have to worry about possibly running into my mother. I don't have much – just bedding and some warmer clothes I didn't take, and school supplies. I had my books delivered to the school's mailroom so I don't have to worry about those either. Hersh has more stuff than I do, but to be honest neither of us takes up too much space in the back of the truck. We can easily fit both of our things.

If Rye even told him what happened, my dad doesn't bring it up. He hugs me and tells me to have a great semester. The way he acts is as if he's in complete denial that I just spent the entire summer four hours away from him, as if I woke up this morning and came to the bakery for a morning shift.

Hersh and I arrive right on schedule, so we're able to make decent time with the move in. We're all settled and ready to go by the time the first few cars pull in after lunch. Hersh, Dalton, Mitch and I are living in another four-person suite, this time in district five's Jurassic dorm – named after the time period, not the movie apparently. Our RA is a tiny redhead with a pointed nose and freckles. She's so quiet I don't even catch her name when she introduces herself.

Dalton and Mitch head up to the dining hall as soon as it opens for dinner and Hersh heads to the Office of International Affairs to check in with the Study Abroad Office. He's going to Ireland in January and our other friend who is abroad in Italy is already set to take his bed. Now he just has to make sure everything is set for his own departure. So, while the three of them head out, I wander down in to the sophomore districts.

Katniss is living in Oaks, much to her disappointment. She and Prim had rigged up a plan for her to live at home, since Prim now has her license, and stay in my room when she could. Katniss and her roommate didn't exactly see eye to eye on a lot of things, so I think that scared her, but Haymitch wouldn't let her commute and I kind of had to agree. She's not a social person and being at home wouldn't help that at all. Besides, it helps me as much as it helps her being walking distance from each other at night. So, instead of living in her room at her house, Katniss is living with three random girls that needed a fourth roommate and I'm hoping they're good for her.

Oaks is right next to Poplar, where I lived last year, so it's easy enough to find and since it's move-in day the doors are propped. I can go right up even though my keycard will only swipe me into the district five dorms. I knock on her door, hoping the heaviness I've been feeling for most of the summer will dissipate when I see her.

The minute she opens the doors, her arms are around me, her face pressed into my chest. It feels good to have her in my arms again. Feeling her against me solidifies me, but it also brings a burning to my throat. Pastor Claudius told me that I need to talk to someone that I trust. I trust Katniss and I know that I can't keep things from her. I need to be able to tell her if I'm not okay, but I don't like telling anyone I'm anything less than fine. But I remind myself that she's the girl I hope will marry me one day, if she'll agree to it, and we need to be on the same page. I don't want to do what Rye did and wait until the last possible moment to tell her, to confide in her, to trust her like she trusts me. Because I do trust her.

The only problem is that I don't trust myself to admit that I'm not okay.

* * *

_Information from the chapter (author's note at the bottom):_

_Boone Memorial Hospital, where Mrs. Donner took Peeta to get his arm x-rayed in his memory, is a hospital in Madison, WV. _

_It's alluded that Rye went to school at Virginia Tech. Based on the timeline, Rye is four years Peeta's elder so he would have graduated high school in June of 2007, two months after the VT shooting on April 16__th__ of that year. Blacksburg, where VT is located, is about 45 minutes from Roanoke._

"_Time and tragedy have forced her to grow too quickly" is a direct line from Mockingjay from Katniss about Prim._

_In canon, the Donner family – Maysilee and her sister, her parents, and possibly other siblings – own the candy store. It's my headcanon that the twins had an older brother – Bon Donner – who has, in this fic, four sons. Hersh and Reese both have names that derive from candy (Hersh from Hershey's, and Reese from Reese's Peanut Butter Cups). I like this as a contrast to the Mellarks, who have a lot of sons and no daughters but an infinitely less love-filled home._

_Nanner puddin is a colloquial name of banana pudding, which is a very popular dessert in the town I'm slightly basing Miner Falls on. _

_Party Palace is a party supply store in Charleston, WV._

_According to the American Cancer Society, September 2013 is Childhood Cancer Month. It is also Leukemia and Lymphoma Awareness Month as well as others, but these two are specifically why Prim chose September._

_The movie Prim and Rue pick to watch is the remake of _Red Dawn_, which is set to release on DVD on March 5, 2013. The "kid that plays Robert" is Josh Hutcherson._

* * *

_Thank you all so much for the continuing support. I greatly appreciate all the messages, both here and on tumblr, asking about the story. I'm glad the long wait time wasn't a deterrent and I hope the turn around for Part IV won't be as long as this! Feel free to follow me on tumblr (dracoisalooker76, so same username) if you want updates on my progress and to ask anything you like. Also, again, I don't use a beta so all mistakes are mine._

_I hope this was worth the long wait that I made you guys sit through. Let me know! _


	4. Part IV

_Sorry for the long wait – more info at the bottom – but I won't keep you waiting. Hope you enjoy! The chapter starts where Part III left off._

* * *

Part IV

_You are the snowstorm, I'm purified_

_The darkest fairytale, in the dead of night_

_Let the band play out, as I'm making my way home again_

_Glorious we transcend, into a psychedelic silhouette_

Gabrielle Aplin, _Salvation_

The air around us is sticky, but if I didn't know it was early September I wouldn't know if it was caused by the weather or the moment. It could be twenty below right now and I'd never know. I'm shirtless and layered with a sheen of sweat as I look up at the stars from the bed of my truck, running my fingers through Katniss's loose locks.

Katniss kisses the middle of my chest and then rests her head on the same spot.

"I missed you so much," I tell her.

She lifts her head and sits up. "You just missed making out with me," she teases.

"Guilty."

We both laugh and I move to a sitting position next to her. We lean against the back of the truck cab and look up at the stars again. Katniss rests her head against my shoulder and takes my hand. I didn't realize until now how starved I've been for human closeness. In the past few months people have surrounded me yet at the same time I've been completely alone.

Being with Katniss feels like coming home.

"Where are you?"

I shake my head and find that Katniss has lifted her head off my shoulder and is now staring into my eyes. She brushes my bangs away with her fingers and lets the tips run down the side of my face, then down my neck, before she rests her palm on my chest. My throat gives a grunt.

"You seem distracted," she says. "Are you okay?"

It takes me a moment to think of an answer because, despite the bliss of this moment, I know that deep down I'm not okay. There are demons hiding under the surface just ready to break out, like they did at Rye's a few weeks ago. But this moment is so perfect that I don't want to ruin it by thinking of things that will bring it down from this high.

And maybe I'm feeling a bit too euphoric to truly grasp those demons because right now they seem like a distant problem. This is the first I've seen – truly seen, and touched, and breathed – of Katniss in months. After meeting her at her door, I whisked her away in my truck to an open field we discovered about twenty or so minutes away from campus, a place that's empty and quiet and peaceful where we could be alone. And, in the needy desperation that came with our separation, we both might have gotten a little handsy – nothing that overwhelmed her or that we hadn't done before, but there wasn't a lot of thinking going on.

"I'm fine," I tell her. "I just...I missed you so much and you being here right now...it feels like a dream."

Katniss smiles back at me. "We're together, real or not real?"

I make a spectacle of pinching myself, causing her to giggle, before I answer. "Real," I say. "And I want it to be real for every minute," I take her hand and kiss her knuckle – "of every hour" – another kiss – "of every day" – kiss – "of the rest of my life."

"Stop being corny," Katniss says, rolling her eyes.

"I can't." I press my forehead to hers and kiss the tip of her nose to epitomize the corniness of my actions. "I'm young and I'm in love."

Katniss heaves a dramatic sigh and rolls her eyes again. "You know, you could write one of those young adult romance novels that Prim loves so much," she says with a smirk.

"I don't see why you're complaining," I joke. "You could do a whole lot worse than me. I could be reciting love poems and holding roses under your window at night."

She leans in and kisses my cheek. "I suppose you'll do."

We sit in the darkness for a while longer with the only sounds around us being the crickets singing their song.

* * *

In my three months of absence from Panem Children's Hospital, nothing seems to have changed. The lobby still looks as if a crayon box has exploded on the walls and tiles of the floor. Effie Trinket remains seated behind the Information desk as her phone wails constantly beside her. On the bulletin board, I can see flyers for various meetings and fundraisers – one of which being the run that Prim is creating.

But, things have changed. Just looking at my art class tells the true story.

Homes is already seated in his regular chair when I push the door open. He has his hands clasped together, a mask over his face like Katniss would wear when she was immunocompromised from her treatments, and is dressed in street clothes. On the table next to his hands is a tin box that I recognize as drawing pencils. When he looks up to see me walking toward him, his eyes widen and begin to sparkle.

"Peeta!" he says. "Look what my mom bought me!"

He lifts the pencils and I smile, sitting down in the chair beside him. "That's awesome, buddy," I say, putting a gentle hand on his bare scalp. "You use them yet?"

Homes shakes his head. "No, I was waiting until you came back," he says with a smile.

I'm taken aback for a moment by Homes's excitement over my return. He babbles on, telling me about how Portia enlisted some of the other volunteers to sit in the room and watch as the kids colored, and how it wasn't the same. One, apparently, didn't know anything about art and couldn't answer any questions.

"I'm sure it wasn't that bad."

"He couldn't even draw a stick figure," Homes says. "And everyone can do that."

I laugh and shake my head. "Well, then," I say, standing up and grabbing a few sheets of paper from the cabinet. "Looks like you've got some work to do."

He grins and takes the paper, opening up the tin and inspecting them carefully before taking one out. The rest of the room is empty. No new kids have come to stop by and the rest of my regulars are missing. I'm not surprised that Castor and Pollux haven't come, given Castor's worsening condition. Nyx and Sloane showed up occasionally, but after Nova passed away Nyx all but stopped coming. Homes is the only one that I could really expect to show. He doesn't miss unless he's confined to bed.

"Peeta?"

I look up to where Homes is drawing and stand so I can walk toward him. "You need help?"

He shakes his head, blinking a few times before continuing. "A lot of the times a girl named Prim came and sat in on our classroom. She said she knew you. Is that true?"

"Yeah, I know Prim," I say, sitting on one of the tables and crossing my arms. "She's my girlfriend's little sister."

"Katniss?" Homes asks.

I nod and he grins when he knows he's right. I've told them bits and pieces about Katniss over the months and all the kids liked hearing about her. But a moment later his face falls and he looks confused.

"What's wrong?"

Homes plays with the string of his facemask. "Prim said that her sister had leukemia like me," he says. "Is that Katniss? Is she sick?"

I let out a breath. Homes is currently receiving maintenance chemotherapy, which helps to prolong remission in patients with acute leukemias. His type, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, is the most common type of cancer in children and has a very high cure rate, but it is no less traumatic than what any other patient goes through. Homes doesn't know Katniss, if he were to bump into her in the hallways of this building he'd never know, but he empathizes with her. And he's scared for her, just as I am every time her complaints parallel symptoms of relapse.

"Yeah, but she's better now," I tell him.

He blinks and eyes me for a minute before turning back to his picture. I sit back and watch him draw. It's amazing to see him work when I think back to the first time I met him, months ago, when he needed help with basic shapes. He's a natural and catching on so quickly. The door opens and a few kids come in. I hand them each a sheet of paper.

The time passes quickly and before long everyone is getting ready to leave. Homes, as always, is the last out. He stops in front of my table and holds out the picture he's been drawing. He's drawn a dandelion, the seeds blowing in the wind, with a pair of lips just within the page. They're pursed as if letting out a breath. On the bottom, he's written: _To: Katniss. From: Homes. Stay better._

"This is great," I tell him.

"Do you think she'll like it?" he asks. "Prim said she likes dandelions and I just...I like knowing people who are better. It made me sad to hear about Castor."

I look up. Homes is barely thirteen, but his childhood innocence about the world has already vanished. He shrugs his shoulders and fidgets a little on his feet, as if he's nervous about his drawing. I make a display of putting it in my folder so it won't wrinkle in my backpack before patting his shoulders.

"She's going to love it."

* * *

Katniss's new roommates invite her to go out to dinner with them on Friday and when she tells me that she hasn't decided whether she's going to go or not, I insist that this is good for her. Although I have only met each of the three for brief moments in passing, they seem really nice and a little more like Katniss than her roommate last year. It'll be good for her to make some friends.

Of course, she has a whole host of excuses on why she shouldn't go that range from terrible to considerable. She's in the middle of telling me that she doesn't know what she would be able to eat since she's never been to the restaurant before, when Hersh lifts his head off the floor, where's he's trying to learn page fourteen of his Spanish book through osmosis, and shakes his head at her.

"Look up the menu online, and send it to your nutritionist," he says. "There, problem solved."

"But," Katniss says. She bites her lip and then turns to Hersh. "I don't know what to wear."

He rolls his eyes. "Look at what your roommates are wearing, genius." Katniss glares at him. "Your excuses are lame. Go and if you have a terrible time you don't have to go again."

Katniss turns to me, but I shrug. "I agree, Kat. They seem nice and I'll be here when you get back so we can hang out."

Begrudgingly, Katniss goes and I end up worrying the entire time. I just really hope it goes okay because I want Katniss to make some friends. She needs people that she can trust besides me and Prim and Haymitch. Hersh tells me that no news is good news and I can only hope that's true.

It's a little after nine when the code gets punched into our room while we're sitting in the common room playing Mario Kart. I abandon my controller and look up as Katniss enters the room. She walks in before I can get up, sits on my lap, and grabs my controller.

"How'd it go?"

She shrugs. "It was fine," she says.

"And I see that you found something suitable to wear," Hersh snickers.

Katniss huffs and continues playing. I wrap my arms around her waist and rest my chin on her shoulder as she finishes the round for me. The four continue to play for a few more rounds before Hersh, Dalton, and Mitch get up to get ready. One of the ROTC guys is having a party and they want to leave around ten to get there. They ask if we want to come and, in lieu of answering, Katniss takes my hand and pulls me into my room. We can still hear them laughing when we shut the door.

Katniss jumps up on my bed and sits with her legs dangling off, waiting for me. I come to a stop in front of her, leaning my body between her legs.

"How'd it go?" I ask again, fingering in the fabric of her orange sundress. It must have thin straps that don't cover her scars because she's wearing a cardigan.

"I told you. It was fine," she says. She grinds her teeth. "You were right. They seem nice."

The way her voice drops off leaves me with the feeling she's leaving something out. "But...?"

Katniss looks down at her lap. "I'm not any good at making friends. I just...I feel like I say stupid stuff."

"You don't."

She nods and then lets out a breath. "How was your night?" she asks, changing the subject.

"Well, the four of us had dinner at Chez Dining Hall, you know, the new really ritzy place. I had to rent a tux and everything." Katniss giggles. "I'm just kidding. I've mainly been thinking about you, but that's not any different than usual."

I lean forward and give her a kiss. When I pull away she smiles. "Can I stay with you tonight or do you need your sleep for the race tomorrow?"

Tomorrow is the 5K that Prim has orchestrated for PCH. I recruited Hersh, Mitch, and Dalton to run it with me, but I think our pace will be a little slow if they're going out tonight. It doesn't really matter to me, there's no way that I would deny Katniss anything, especially sleeping in my bed when I haven't been able to all summer.

"My covers are always open to you."

She grins and falls backward, splaying her arms out over my comforter. "Can you get me some pajamas then?" she asks. "I need to get out of this dress."

I go into my drawer and grab a t-shirt as well as a pair of her pajama shorts that I keep on hand. Katniss is tiny, a side effect of being bombarded with toxic chemicals designed to save her life from the time she was five, and my shirts dwarf her. They're basically nightgowns and nine times out of ten you'd never know she was wearing shorts under them.

I toss the clothes on the bed and head for the door. "I'm going to grab a drink. Want anything?"

She says no and I walk out of the room to grab a glass of water while she changes. I hate that Katniss isn't comfortable with her body and I wish more than anything that she could see how beautiful she really is. All she sees are scars. Sometimes I wonder if she'll ever let me see her port scar. I don't even know if Prim has seen it.

Katniss is getting better. She's fine with me seeing the scars on her stomach from when her skin was basically raw during radiation. I'd like to think that my routine of kissing her scars – the ones on her hands, her belly, her ribs – is helping her or at least doing something.

When I go back in my room, Katniss is laying down with her head on my pillow. When she sees me she reaches her arms out and it seems to take two steps for me to get from my door to my bed, jumping up and hovering over her so I can kiss her neck and the exposed section of her collarbone.

* * *

Primrose Everdeen is going to change the world one day. The sixteen-year-old stands on a plastic box with a megaphone to her mouth and an ID wrapped around her neck as she directs people around her school's track. The schoolyard is packed with people, runners as well as bystanders, for the event. She did this, all of this, with barely any help.

The Pace for Progress 5K Run/Walk for Panem Children's Hospital.

I look down at my watch. The kid's Gold Ribbon Relay for Childhood Cancer Awareness is just starting with a lap around the track, and then the 5K will start promptly at eleven, circling the neighborhood where her school is located in a 3.1-mile loop. Kids from Prim's school are sitting behind the desks checking people in and handing out t-shirts, race numbers, and a flyer about what programs the donated money is going toward – this year it's to put mini-fridges in the rooms on the cancer and blood disorder floor. They also have a thermometer poster that a few girls keep coloring as they count up the funds raised toward their goal.

A squeal hits my ears and before I can even think, Prim has her arms around me.

"You're here!" she says, moving the megaphone away from her mouth so she doesn't scream it across the yard. She pulls back and looks at us, nodding her head. "And you already signed in, good."

"Prim, this is amazing," Hersh says from beside me. "I can't believe you did this."

Prim shrugs. "It wasn't really me. Once the run was in place, this is all the families' doing. They enlisted everyone they knew! It's incredible."

She's being too modest, but the two of us let it slide. As she continues talking, I notice Rory sneaking up behind her. He puts his finger to his mouth to make sure Hersh and I don't say anything and waits until he's right behind her to cover her eyes with his hands. She shrieks and spins around, pounding his chest.

"Rory Hawthorne!" she screams. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Hi, Prim," he says before turning to Hersh and me. He tries to hold in a laugh. "Hey, guys. Nice shirts. I'm sure Posy will love 'em."

All I can do is groan and turn to Hersh. He throws his arm around my shoulder with a huge grin on his face.

"Real men wear pink, Rory," he says.

I shrug Hersh's arm off my shoulder. When I woke up this morning, I found the three of them in the common room, giggling like a trio of five-year-olds who think they got away with stealing the candy dish. However, instead of a candy dish they had four shirts, all blinding neon pink with a spray painted bird on the front with "TEAM MOCKINGJAY" around it. On the other side were our last names over our room number, like an old baseball shirt, covered in glitter. They say they didn't drink last night and instead used their time painting instead. Given the state of these shirts, I'm not too sure their story is accurate.

At least Katniss thought it was hilarious this morning.

Hersh, Dalton, Mitch, and I run at a leisurely pace for the majority of the 5K, however when we reach the homestretch Hersh starts sprinting, daring the three of us to catch up. Of course, Mitch does ROTC so he's in the best shape and completely blows us out of the water. As soon as the race is finished, I head over to find Katniss and wrap my arms around her lithe frame.

"Eww, stop," she squeals. "You're all sweaty!"

She's right. It's a hot morning, only to get hotter as the day goes on. I just tighten my squeeze on her waist. As she squirms away, her shirt raises just slightly but enough for my arms to make contact with her stomach. I lean down and bury my wet forehead into her neck at the same time.

It makes her shiver, but I can feel her chest shaking with laughter against mine.

"Stop," she chuckles.

I kiss her cheek and press my mouth to her ear. "What's the magic word?"

She turns and her gray eyes dance in the sunlight. "You smell."

"Wrong!" I laugh and spin her around in my arms so I can put my forehead on hers.

I move my eyes around as I speak. "What do you think?" I ask, hoping she understands what I'm getting at. She does.

"I'm so proud of her," she says. "She's such a good kid – which, in and of it itself is amazing, since Haymitch pretty much raised her."

"You're so mean," I tease.

She shrugs. "It's one of my less endearing qualities."

I lift my head and see that over her shoulder Haymitch is giving us a look which, given the distance he is away from us, has nothing to do with what Katniss just said about him. I let go of her and grind my teeth together. It doesn't matter that I've been with Katniss for over two years; Haymitch still terrifies me because as much as she badmouths him, his opinion means the world to her.

She looks over her shoulder and when she turns back to me, she's rolling her eyes.

"He's just a big softy under all that gruff. You know that," she says.

"Yeah, well, I learned to never cross a mother bear," I mutter. "They're protective of their cubs."

Katniss rolls her eyes again and turns toward Haymitch. She must give him a look because he raises his eyebrows pointedly in our direction but then turns and starts chatting with Cinna. Katniss spins back around and grabs my hands in hers, swinging them back and forth.

"So, what do you want to do today?" It's the first Saturday of the semester so we don't have much work to do yet, and I want to spend as much time as possible with her before we get slammed with midterms.

Katniss smirks. "Well, I want you to take a shower first."

I roll my eyes and stick out my tongue as she chuckles. "I'm actually considering not showering for the rest of my life." I try to look conflicted and concerned. "Will you still love me?"

"I mean, I'll still love you," she says, the smirk still on her lips. "I may not stand next to you."

I let go of her hands and bring mine to her face so I can pull her toward me. The kiss is brief, as I'm sure Haymitch is watching. "You're perfect," I tell her.

As she pulls away, she shakes her head. "I'm pretty sure my DNA is as imperfect as it can possibly get. Yours on the other hand..."

I shake my head. "I'm not perfect," I insist.

Not by a long shot.

Katniss frowns and eyes me for a minute. "You know, you never told me about your time in Roanoke," she says. "Was it okay?"

I take a deep breath and feel my throat start to constrict. I can hear the high-pitched laughter of children, adults having merry conversation, and in the far reaches of the back of my mind my mother's nagging voice. I haven't seen or heard from her since the night I left Miner Falls. But this is not the place to tell that to Katniss.

"It was fine," I say, wrapping my arm around her shoulders. "I'm just glad to be back."

* * *

Prim insists that we come over for dinner that night. She and Haymitch are going to show their new and improved cooking skills. Katniss tells me on the way over that it will probably be Haymitch making the actual meal and Prim probably made a batch of cookies for dessert. She also tells me that over the summer they bought Haymitch an apron that says _Kiss the Cook_. That's reason enough to go.

When we walk in, Prim is in the living room. Katniss gives me a look that says, "told you," before making her way into the kitchen.

Prim is sprawled out on the floor in the front den, papers scattered everywhere and her laptop right in front of her face. Whereas Katniss's green MacBook case is basically pristine, Prim's is covered in stickers. She has her school logo, a gold ribbon that has an angel and the words "CURE CHILDHOOD CANCER" written inside it, a couple hearts and flowers, and one that says "Keep Calm and Carry On" – a saying I've seen all over campus. There's so much going on, you can barely tell the case color is purple and not made of her stickers.

She looks up from her typing and smiles. "Hi!"

"You doing homework?" I ask, leaning down to pick up one of the sheets. It's not homework, but a handwritten account of a college.

Prim shakes her head. "I'm trying to narrow down the schools that I want to visit. We can't go to them all." She spins her laptop to show me that she's set up an excel sheet with three columns – _Definitely Applying_, _Need to Visit_, and _Possibly Visit_. All of the ones that she's definitely applying to are instate, the other two columns house colleges all the way north to Boston and south to Atlanta. Her possibly visit list is a lot longer than her need to visit.

"Any advice?" she asks.

I shrug. "I dunno, Prim. I only applied to State and Virginia Tech. I never even visited anywhere."

"Yeah, Katniss wasn't any help either," Prim says with a smirk. "I'm still convinced that the only reason she even agreed to apply to State was so she could have sleepovers with you whenever she wanted to."

"Very funny," I say as she giggles. I change the subject. "You're making me feel old, Prim. I can't believe you're old enough to be thinking about college."

Prim smirks. "You've only got three semesters left after this one," she says. "That make you feel better?"

"No."

She laughs, throwing her head back and covering her mouth. Once she settles down, she turns back to me. "Do you have any plans for what you're going to do?"

"I need to start studying for the GRE and figure out which graduate schools I'm going to apply to so I can get my master's," I say. I lean over and tap her nose. "Kind of like you're doing right now."

Prim smiles and looks back down at her lists and I lean back into the front of the couch. I still haven't told Katniss that I'll have to leave the city for graduate school. Hopefully, one of the programs that are relatively close by accepts me, because I don't know what I'd do if I had to go somewhere far away. It's what Leaven did. Travel far and leave everyone else behind, but I could never do that.

It's one of my many flaws that I'm too dependent on people.

In the back of my mind I can hear my mother laughing. She would say the same thing about me. I care too much about what people think of me that I'm willing to bend to them, instead of making them bend to me like she does.

I feel my throat constrict thinking about it. My mother has most of Miner Falls wrapped around her little finger and that includes my father. He hasn't called me once since I came back to campus, not even the night I moved in to make sure I made it all right. I guess he figured out through the Donners that Hersh was all settled and figured that meant I was fine too. Rye has texted me once or twice in the week that I've been here, but since I snapped at him about Pastor Claudius there's been a sort of tension between us. But we were never super close anyway. I don't know what I was thinking, that Rye, Dad, and I would go gallivanting off into the sunset?

I feel a hand on my thigh and when I look up, Prim is gone and Katniss is in her place. She looks at me with worry in her eyes and I quickly try to come back from my thoughts.

"Where's Prim?"

"Main Kwong. Haymitch burned dinner so we're having Chinese instead. Hope you don't mind." I shake my head. "Are you okay? You look upset and you didn't even notice me sit down."

I do not want to talk to Katniss about this right now. Part of me believes it's because Prim could come through the door any minute and our conversation would get interrupted, so why start now. But there's another, more irrational, part to my not wanting to tell Katniss. I'm scared. I'm scared that she'll see me for everything that I really am.

Useless. A failure. Someone who she shouldn't want. Someone who isn't good enough for her.

So, instead, I wrap my arm around her shoulder and plaster a grin on my face. "It's nothing. I'm just tired."

She doesn't look convinced. But I'm saved from explaining by Prim walking through the front door.

* * *

Katniss decides to come back to campus with me that night rather than staying at home like I expected her to do. Usually, Katniss has a hard time transitioning back to school after spending so much time at home, but I guess she missed me enough to neglect a weekend with Prim and Haymitch.

I'm not going to complain.

We stay at the house for a while after dinner. Prim pulls out Monopoly in her attempt to keep us around as long as possible (it's quickly vetoed by Haymitch who doesn't want to stay up for hours playing games) but we end up playing spoons. It's hilarious because Katniss is so unobservant to anything other than getting her set of four matching cards that she never notices anyone grab a spoon from the middle until she finally gets all four or Prim can't hold her giggles in.

We don't end up leaving until after eleven, long after Haymitch has gone upstairs to bed. Prim gives us each a hug goodbye and tells us not to be strangers. Katniss rolls her eyes, but it makes me smile. Like Katniss said earlier, Prim's a good kid. Sometimes it's hard to remember that she's sixteen.

My room is empty when we get back, but it's a complete disaster. The others have left their shot glasses on the table along with an open handle. I go to clean off the table since I know Katniss isn't the biggest fan, but she grabs my hand and shakes her head.

"Leave it. You're on my time."

We curl up under the covers with my laptop and Haymitch's Netflix account streaming. Katniss doesn't make it to the end, so once I'm sure she's too far gone to wake up, I pull away enough to turn the movie off and shutdown my computer.

I can't really sleep. After a half hour of staring at the wall attempting to count sheep, I recognize that I'm not going to sleep for a while. Unfortunately insomnia is never good for me because I'm incapable of turning my mind off. For a while I can just watch Katniss sleep, but that reminds me of before dinner.

I don't even know where to begin on how to tell my story to Katniss. The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it sounds in my head and I sound like a whiny brat with misdirected parent issues. Parents are supposed to adore their kids, right? You have to be a complete mess to stop unconditional love.

I look back down at Katniss and wonder how I can ever be enough for her when I'm not even enough for my parents. She deserves the world.

Tonight is one of those nights when I realize sleep is futile. I'm still awake when Hersh, Dalton, and Mitch come stumbling in. The three of them spend a little time in the common room before they're done for the night. Hersh falls asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow and I'm still up. And, when I do finally manage to sleep, I wake up maybe an hour or two later.

Like usual, my nightmares are about losing Katniss. This time, however, she doesn't relapse. She doesn't catch pneumonia. Her heart doesn't stop. All of the scenarios that are usually running through my head disappear. The Katniss that debuts in my nightmares tonight sounds shockingly like my mother.

When I wake up again around six, I carefully roll out of bed. I take my laptop and let Katniss sleep. Hersh will probably be up any minute. He always wakes up early after he drinks so I won't be alone for long. I grab a drink from the fridge and throw some bread into the toaster before sitting down to look at what I have to do for the day. I don't have too much work, just a few reading assignments and a problem set, so I go into my email. I didn't check it yesterday with the race.

I have ten messages in my inbox. Two general messages from the school. A couple junk. And one from Portia.

My heart sinks and I don't open it immediately. I stare at the subject line. _This Week._ It could be anything. Sometimes Portia sends us emails about the upcoming week, especially if there's a holiday or another fun event for the kids. But there's no holidays coming up and I _know _what the email is going to say. Not opening it is just prolonging the inevitable.

When I finally open the message, the content doesn't surprise me.

Castor passed away on Saturday.

I just sit there, numb, unfeeling, my mind just utterly blank. I don't know how long I sit there for, but after what feels like days, I feel my eyes start to water. I slam my laptop closed and then unconsciously walk back to my room. Hersh and Katniss are both still sleeping, unaware of the stillness that is wrapping itself around my heart. My body acts of its own accord, climbing carefully back into bed and wrapping my arms around Katniss, trying desperately not to wake her up with my tears.

* * *

Prim comes to Castor's wake with me the following Tuesday. She got to know my art kids when she sat in on my class while I was in Roanoke. I almost can't walk inside, but Prim wraps her arms around mine and leads me in. I look at her, in her simple black dress, with her hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, and wonder how she does this. How did she get to be so strong?

She's the one that does everything. She talks to Portia. She talks to a few nurses we recognize. She talks to Castor and Pollux's mother, who is crying, but reaches out for Prim's hands and gives them a squeeze, not saying a word but not needing to. Prim understands. Prim understands better than anyone.

But Prim doesn't approach Pollux. She leaves that to me.

Pollux sits at the front of the room, on the ground in front of the casket, which is open for viewing with a bench for kneeling in front of it. He's not crying or doing anything but stare. I sit down beside him and he doesn't turn.

"Hey, Pollux," I say. "How you doing, buddy?"

He blinks a few times. "I'm sad."

"I'm sad too."

Pollux bites his lip and then turns to me, flinging his arms out and collapsing in a heap on top of me. His little fingers dig into my shoulders and his tears wet my shirt as he attempts to press his face into my heart. He wails. I can feel the little energy that the room had before instantly stop and I know everyone's eyes are on us.

I just press my face into his unruly sandy hair and let myself cry too.

* * *

For lack of a more sophisticated phrase, the rest of my week sucks.

I can't stop thinking about Pollux. Castor meant so much to him, so much more than I could ever imagine either of my brothers meaning to me, and it just makes this situation all the more devastating. Thinking about them and how close they were reminds me of Katniss and Prim, which is no good as well, because it fuels my nightmares. One night, I'm at the same church as Castor's services, only instead of Pollux sitting in front of the casket, it's Prim. I wake up sobbing.

By Friday, I'm completely exhausted and Katniss and Hersh decide to stage a coup. Katniss tells me that she's going home for the night so I can get some sleep and Hersh basically force-feeds me Tylenol PM. It helps me keep my eyes shut, but it does nothing for the nightmares. Apparently I thrash most of the night.

Katniss comes back the next day and having her in my arms actually works a little. I still wake up, but as soon as I can see her next to me, I can close my eyes and go back to sleep.

* * *

"_I got my ticket for the long way 'round / the one with the prettiest of views / It's got mountains, it's got rivers, it's got sites to give you shivers / but it sure would be prettier with you / When I'm gone, when I'm gone..."_

I blink a few times. Katniss is still out like a light and when I look over at Hersh's side of the room, he's already awake and out of the room. I reach over and try to slam the alarm, wondering why it's going off on a Sunday.

It's then that I realize that it's not the alarm but Katniss's phone and, specifically, Prim's handpicked ringtone.

I simultaneously reach for the phone and shake Katniss's shoulder. She answers groggily as I roll out of bed and grab my own phone, which is charging on the desk. I tap the home button and the screen awakens from its sleep. The battery is green, completely charged, and the time says 7:55.

Under that: _Sunday, September 15_.

As far as history is concerned, nothing extraordinary happened on September 15, 1998. It was a Tuesday. There were no fireworks or holidays or battles in great wars, at least to my limited knowledge. On September 15, 1998, I was five years, six months, and one day old, and I sat in my kindergarten class as Delly raised her hand and said three words that foreshadowed so much tragedy and pain for our little town.

"She's sick today."

While I colored and played and giggled and napped, Katniss, who had woken up with bruises lining her chest, was shuffled to the town doctor, who told her mother to take her to Boone Memorial Hospital for blood work. The staff told Mrs. Everdeen that they would get back to her about whether or not Katniss had anemia by the end of the day.

We all know the ending to that story.

"Prim, calm down," Katniss says. She sounds slightly panicked and frantic. "I can't understand what you're saying."

I hold my breath as Katniss lets out hers. "Prim, listen to me. I'm fine. I'm going to be fine. Stop worrying." Again she sighs and looks over at me. I can hear Prim wailing through the phone. "Prim, listen. I'm going to get dressed and then Peeta and I are going to come over. Okay? I'll see you soon, okay?"

She disconnects the call and puts her head in her hands. I lean against the bed and put a hand on her kneecap in, what I hope, is a comforting gesture. She sighs and leans forward to rest her forehead on my shoulder.

"You okay?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "No," she says. "But, I will be once my sister stops freaking out."

Apparently, I'm not the only one with nightmares.

"Then, let's go."

Prim comes barreling through the house before we even get through the door, throwing herself at her sister as if the world is going to end tomorrow. Katniss hugs her tightly and the two don't disconnect, not even to walk up the stairs. They'd rather walk together at a slower pace, almost tripping over each other's feet, than let go.

I smell Haymitch before I see him.

He smells like bourbon. His hair is a mess, he's still in his pajamas, and I can tell just by looking at it that his cup is straight up alcohol, filled almost to the rim. It's not his first glass, probably not his second either, and his eyes follow the girls up the stairs until we can no longer see them.

"Clara always knew the best way to fuck everything up," he says, chuckling darkly, and turning around. He gestures for me to follow by wiggling his finger over his shoulder as he walks toward the kitchen. "You want a drink? You're twenty-one, right?"

"Not 'til March," I mutter.

"Close enough."

I sit as Haymitch digs through his liquor fridge he's had built into the island. He pulls out a bottle of white liquor and pours some into two glasses, followed by juice into one of them. He passes me the one that's mostly juice and keeps the other, the next round after he finishes his bourbon.

I don't touch the drink. Seeing Prim so clearly upset has my stomach doing uncomfortable flops. I've known Prim since she was twelve, since her sister was actively dying, and I've never seen her so upset. I hadn't really noticed, but Prim has been a pillar of strength for me. She was strong through Katniss's illness, through losing kids that we volunteered with. She single handedly helped me through Castor's wake.

She was only a year old when Katniss was diagnosed. She doesn't remember it, but maybe just knowing the date is enough for her.

"I've never seen Prim like this before," I say, sloshing the drink around in the glass.

Haymitch grunts and throws back the rest of his bourbon. "She's a strong kid," he mutters. He runs a hand through his hair. "Katniss ever tell you about the journal?"

I shake my head.

"Their mother wrote a journal about when Katniss was sick," he says. "I found it in her things when I was cleaning out their house, after they died. I gave it to Katniss on her seventeenth birthday." He pauses and shakes his head. "I originally planned for her eighteenth, but..."

He doesn't finish, but he doesn't need to. I know what happened. Katniss got sick and he didn't know if she'd make it to eighteen.

Haymitch taps his empty bourbon glass on the counter. "I should've burned it all, but I figured she had a right to read it," he muttered. He grunts again. "I don't think she ever did."

I look up from the glass Haymitch is fiddling with. "I take it Prim found it."

Haymitch blows a breath through his nose. "Last night. She was looking for some stupid book Katniss had in her bookshelf. I found her sitting in Katniss's room this morning at five o'clock. Kid sat up all night reading." He runs his hand through his hair again. "She read the whole goddamn thing. Every goddamn detail we've tried to hide from her, the bad stuff she was too little to remember. On this day of all fucking days."

He slams his bourbon glass on the counter and looks up at the ceiling. "We kept a lot of things from Prim that we probably shouldn't have. She didn't really remember a whole hell of a lot, so we just let her keep her head in the clouds about how bad things were back then." He grunts and looks like he's going to keep talking, but he doesn't.

Then he grabs his liquor and walks out the door into the backyard. I can hear him yelling at the geese, at the sky, and then the sound of glass breaking against a tree.

I don't know what else to do, so I just sit there and wait for Katniss to come back down.

* * *

The journal is actually three journals, all at least five hundred pages of eight-and-a-half by eleven that detail Katniss's illness and, judging by what Haymitch told me, the slow and steady demise of the Everdeen family. Katniss holds them in her lap on our way back to campus later that night.

"I'm going to burn them," she says when we pull into my parking spot.

"You sure?"

She glares at me. "I don't need to read it," she says. "I lived it."

"I'm just saying, that it might help you understand what your mother was going throu–"

"Stop!" Katniss exclaims. "You...God, Peeta, you're the last person who should be giving me advice on how to deal with this."

She moves to open the truck door, but I grab her arm to stop her. "What's that supposed to mean?"

When she turns to face me, she looks so lost and small that I regret raising my voice. "Peeta, you won't talk to me! I've asked you time and time again if you're okay and you always say the same thing. _I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine_." She shakes her head and closes her eyes. "But you're not fine. And it's so obvious, but you won't tell me what's wrong. And I know that you're trying to protect me, but I'm a big girl."

A few tears leak out. "What's the point of being in a relationship with me if you don't trust me enough to tell me things that are obviously bothering you?"

"No, Katniss –"

"I'm not fragile and I thought that you were the only person in the entire world who realized that," she says. "We protect each other, that's what we do, and it's my turn to help you. Please."

"I didn't want to talk to you because I don't even understand half of it."

Katniss reaches across the seats and takes my hands. "Then just talk and maybe we can figure things out together." She shrugs. "And if not, I have a whole list of people that I've talk to – psychs, social workers, all sorts of people – and if you can't talk to me, maybe you can talk to one of them."

My throat feels constricted and we're both crying. There is too much emotion in this truck. But she's right. I remember Pastor Claudius's words of advice. I hang my head low.

"Peeta, I love you and that's never going to stop, no matter what you say," I hear her say.

I feel like a little kid when I say, "Promise?" without even looking up.

"Promise."

* * *

My earliest memory is actually of my mother.

Growing up, my parents got into their fair share of arguments. Usually, they consisted of my mother yelling with barely a pause for breath and my father only raising his voice when he needed to, such as when my brothers or I were involved.

"You goddamn son of a bitch!"

"Quiet down, or you're gonna scare the boys!"

Rye let out a breath and took my hand. I was about four and a half, maybe a little older, so he was almost nine. He told Leaven to change into his pajamas while he took me into the bathroom to wash my face and make sure I brushed my teeth. Then he helped me get dressed while Leaven went into the bathroom. We curled up in his bed while we listened to the crashes and screams from downstairs.

"Rye?" I asked. "Why is Momma and Papa yellin'?"

There was a particularly loud smash which ended up being an old ceramic lamp my grandmother made.

"Because," he said as Leaven came in and jumped onto the bed with us. "That's what grown ups do. They yell at each other, they make up, and they yell some more."

"I don't wanna be a grown up," Leaven said.

"Me neither," I agreed.

I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I remember is the door to our room opening and my mother walking in. I kept my eyes closed and pretended to be asleep because I didn't want to make her any madder. Rye was still awake though and when she came over, she sat on the edge of the bed. I cracked an eye open just enough so I could see but not enough so she could tell.

"Where's Dad?" Rye asked.

Our mother shook her head and adjusted his bangs. "He had something he had to do at the bakery. You'll see him tomorrow."

"Why were you fighting?" She was quiet for a moment so Rye kept talking. "Was it about that lady that came in the bakery today? The one with the little girl and the baby?"

She clucked her tongue. "It was nothing you need to worry about. Okay?" Then she turned to look at me and Leaven. I shut my eye. "Thank you for taking care of your brothers. Now get some sleep."

I heard her kiss Rye's forehead and then she ran her hand through my hair. And then she left. The next morning she made us breakfast, which was usually Dad's job, and even let us watch cartoons. We had a good day.

Dad came home around dinnertime and he brought a white bakery box with him. All three of us jumped out of our seats and ran to him, begging to eat the cupcakes he brought home before dinner and not after. Surprisingly, he let us eat them right on the spot. They were created just for us – vanilla with buttercream for Rye, chocolate with chocolate mousse for Leaven, and chocolate with buttercream for me. I practically inhaled mine right into my lungs and when I turned to my mother to see if she was going to yell at us for ruining our appetites for dinner, I noticed that she looked sad and mad at the same time.

* * *

Eventually, we move out of the truck and Katniss pulls me to an open grassy area and we lay there looking up at the stars. There is something infinite about the stars that all at once makes me feel extraordinarily small as well as limitless. The thing that has always intrigued me about the sky is that when you look up, it appears as if it is so close that you can touch it but when you reach out to grab a handful of stars or a puff of clouds, all you get is air. The stars are so far away from us that we only see a tiny pinpoint. We can never see anything else but that tiny bit.

The thing that makes the situation with my mother difficult is that I think, at one point, she must have loved me. I don't think it was a strong love, but it was love nonetheless. And, somehow, somewhere along the line, she stopped. I assume it was slow, but in the bits of memory that I have from my early childhood, the moments I have make it seem like it was one swift kick, like someone walking into their living room and deciding one day that they don't like the color of paint that's on the wall.

I don't know what I did to show my mother that I'm useless but whatever it was she saw it.

I'm still afraid to tell that to Katniss, so instead I put her in the hot seat. "What was your mother like?"

She's never told me about her parents, aside from her rant about love she gave me before she relapsed years ago, and I've never asked. It just seemed easier not to delve into these issues. We were hiding from them, at least I was.

Katniss takes a deep breath and then lets it out. "She loved me a lot," she says. "She loved me too much. That was her problem."

"How can that be a problem?" I ask. I didn't mean to interrupt, but that seems impossible.

She shrugs. "Her life became a mission to save mine. It consumed her and it ruined everything. My dad was always working and she was always with me. And then when I got better and we went home, whenever they were together they were arguing, and it was usually about me." She swallows audibly. "My dad wanted me to go back to school, my mom didn't. Things like that became wars against each other. They were practically handing each other divorce papers when I relapsed."

Katniss is quiet for a minute. "Sometimes I feel like it's my fault."

"It's not."

"I know," she says. "Doesn't mean that it makes me feel any different about it."

Something about that resonates with me. I reach for her hand and give it a squeeze.

"I know what you mean." Katniss turns on her side so she can look at me and I continue. "I feel like I was never good enough, you know? Like my mother loved me because she had to and then she realized that she didn't. I mean, I've never done anything the way she wanted. Everyone in town knew that my parents were trying for a girl when they had me and as I grew up we butted heads on everything."

Katniss shakes her head. "You are good enough."

"What kind of son makes his own mother hate him?"

"I think the right question is what kind of mother hates her own son."

Before long, the two of us are crying while I tell her some of the things that my mother has said to me over the years.

"My mother thinks I'm worthless and probably thinks that it's a waste of air for me to breathe."

This clearly upsets Katniss, who reaches for me and clings on tightly. I hate that I'm making her cry. It just makes me feel like, yet again, I'm doing something wrong. Who does this? Katniss deserves better than this. After all the shit that she's gone through, she deserves the happiest ending in the world and I don't know if I can give it to her. Clearly, I wasn't able to give it to anyone else.

"Peeta, look at me." I hadn't even realized that I'd closed my eyes. When I open them, Katniss has positioned herself on top of me so that we're so close I can feel her breath on my lips. I think she's trying to come up with something powerful to say. She ends up with, "She's an idiot."

The bluntness is so Katniss that it almost makes me smile. But at this point I don't think I can. The feelings of inadequacy are too strong right now.

"I know that she's your mother," Katniss continues. "I get that. But she doesn't deserve you."

"But everyone runs back to her," I say. "My dad hasn't talked to me since I've been back. It's like he chose her over me." I can feel my blood start to boil, just as it had when I drew in my sketchbook over the summer. "And I knew it was going to happen too. I told Rye the same thing. He just let Leaven go and didn't even try to stop him and now he's doing the same thing to me. And I hate it. I never want to go back."

And that's it. My family has successfully imploded upon itself. I feel hollow.

We stay in the grass through the night and the sun begins to rise around us, engulfing the campus in a pure golden light. The way Pastor Claudius spoke about opening up made me think that putting everything out on the table would make me feel better. I imagined having this conversation with Katniss so many times and I always figured that I would leave it feeling lighter.

If anything, I feel heavier than before. Talking about it didn't cure anything. I still hear my mother's voice in the back of my head. I still get angry when I think about my father, who said he loved me so many times but hasn't really shown it. The only thing that talking about it has given me is the courage to lay everything on the table in front of Katniss. There is nothing left to me that she doesn't know.

And the fact that she doesn't move away but in fact snuggles closer gives me the slightest bit of hope that I'm not alone.

* * *

I made the mistake of telling Katniss about my sketchbook full of hate drawings during our tell-all and, that Friday, she insists on seeing it.

I've never been more scared.

My hands are shaking when I pull it out of the bottom drawer of my desk and walk to the bed where she's sitting. I jump up next to her and lay the sketchbook across our laps, letting the pictures do the talking.

The first picture Katniss stops on is of my mother. She's holding me as an infant, her nose upturned, as my father looks over her shoulder in pure delight. It's clear that he's in love and it's abundantly clear that my mother wants nothing to do with me.

Katniss flips the page.

The next one she spends a long time looking at is the one with my father holding the scythe, the one that Rye found the day I broke down in his living room. He had torn it out so I had to tape it back in. She sucks in a breath and traces the devil's equipment.

She flips each page slowly and carefully looks at every face and every detail. She sees Miner Falls go up in flames. She sees a picture of my family smiling in a broken frame, as if someone had knocked it off a mantle. She sees my mother screaming. My father turning into the devil. Rye sweeping everything under the rug. Leaven running.

"What are you thinking?" I ask. My voice has a slight quiver to it, since I'm imagining her slamming the book shut and chucking it in my face, telling me that I have a problem, and running out of my life.

"I hate them," she says, flipping back to the front and starting to go through them again. "I mean, they're extraordinary. I just hate that you feel this way."

We both stare at the drawings again.

"I hate them too," I tell her once we're about halfway through the second viewing. "I just...I feel so...like a freak."

"I think it's a good thing that you draw it out," she says, looking up at me. "It's bad to live in your head. If you keep everything in you'll just explode."

For a moment I think back to when Rye found my sketchbook and how he freaked out after looking through it. I know that part of the reason I was afraid to talk to Katniss and show her my book was because I feared her reaction. Rye made me feel like I had done something wrong. He was mad at me at first and I know it's because drawing these types of things isn't normal. Normal people don't draw church congregations chasing them with torches.

"So you don't think I'm crazy or deranged?"

Katniss keeps her eyes on the sketchbook. She's lingering on one of the few pages that don't showcase gray skies and dark undertones. It's the waitress at the Waffle House that I frequented, the one who had my order ready the minute I walked in the door. She's standing with her coworker, her eyes lit up as she laughs at something I can't hear. I know that the page after this is the first of my father-as-the-devil portraits.

She turns away from the page and shakes her head.

"No. I don't."

* * *

Parents Weekend is the last weekend of September, but to me it just seems like a cruel joke. It's not that my parents ever came to Parents Weekend, but this year it seems to affect me more than the previous two. They don't call to tell me that they're not coming, but they haven't called the entire month of September, so I don't know why I kept checking my phone, waiting for a missed call after my classes, the week before all the parents start to show.

There's a football game that Saturday and a huge tailgate sponsored by the school for families so while my roommates go out to join in the festivities, I just sit in the empty dorms. I must not be the only one whose parents don't come, but it seems so quiet that it wouldn't surprise me if it were true.

I wonder if my father sent along an excuse with the Donners on why he couldn't come. He probably told them to tell me that the bakery was busy and he couldn't get away. Maybe he even told them to tell me that he loved me. But, even if he did, I just feel as though they're empty words and I think Hersh figured out that I didn't want to hear any of it, because he met his parents and Reese outside instead of bringing them up. I haven't told him exactly what's going on with my family, but he knows me well enough to realize something's not right. And, since he's still part of Miner Falls, he has probably heard all the gossip.

The only other person who seems to be parentless today is Katniss. She comes to my room just as the cheers from the stadium start to get too loud and we hang out for a bit before leaving campus completely. She can probably tell how much the campus atmosphere is bothering me, even though I'm trying to hide it.

We spend the rest of the day with Haymitch. Prim is off somewhere with her friends and he's just sitting watching television with a glass of scotch when we get there. His eyes almost glitter with excitement to have some company, but that just might be the light and my imagination. I expect to spend the day trying to hide my frown.

We don't end up doing much of anything, but it's okay. We talk for a while and then flip channels. We end up watching a marathon of people picking their new house out of three that seem to each be lacking something that makes it their dream house. Katniss and I never agree on which house the couple should choose and it makes Haymitch give a full belly laugh.

"I feel bad for your real estate agent," he says, chuckling as we bicker.

A calm washes over me and I think to myself that I could do this every day. There's no yelling or arguing. There's no need to worry about what I say. If I mention that I like House Number Two better than House Number One, Katniss just shakes her head and side-eyes me, telling me that One is in the neighborhood they want and, even if it's smaller, it's all about location on this show. Haymitch just rolls his eyes and, to spite her, chooses Three. It doesn't matter that we don't agree, none of us are wrong (at least not until the couple chooses Three and Katniss insists that Haymitch has seen this one before), we're just expressing our opinions. Opinions are good. It gives us depth as humans.

By the time Prim walks through the door with bags from the mall, it feels like no time has passed at all when really we've watched six couples choose their houses, saw others leave the country for more exotic locales like Paris and Beijing, and switched the channel to the evening news, which is delighted to report that State won the football game. I had completely forgotten about it.

Sometimes we find the things we need most in the place we least expect.

* * *

School picks up with the first round of midterms and suddenly the semester begins to fly. I'm so busy with my work that I barely have time to think about anything besides school. I'm taking the requisite five classes, and also have an additional sixth class that meets once every two weeks. By accepting my admission to the Honors program, I had to commit to doing a service-learning project during my junior year. Since I'm minoring in education, my art class at PCH could be counted for it. The biweekly Monday night class is mostly reflection on our placements. On top of six classes, I picked up a job at Mags' diner. I figure that I've lost my job at the bakery, so I have to start working elsewhere. Despite financial aid and scholarships, I'm still going to have loans to pay off and graduate school won't be cheap.

I don't have as much free time, not by a long shot, but in some ways it ends up being a blessing in disguise for Katniss. It's not as though she turns into any sort of social butterfly, but she spends more time in her own room now that I'm not in mine so often. Between the four of us, our suite is more often than not devoid of life, and Katniss's roommates begin to notice her hanging around by herself. They've always been nice to her, letting her join them and inviting her to things they're going to, but I'm just glad that she managed to find a group of girls that are willing to be patient with her.

She's stubborn and she won't let them in immediately. When she brings them with her to Mags' one day to see me, I almost drop everything I'm carrying in surprise. I'm proud of her and I make sure to tell her that. She says the same thing, although I'm not sure what there is to be proud of in terms of my life.

Pollux comes back to my class in the middle of October. The day he comes back, Homes looks up at me from his seat at the front when Pollux steps inside, his earbuds in, his iPod in his hand. I'm not exactly sure if there's a certain protocol about what to do in this situation, but I figure the best thing to do is behave the same way around him as before and adjust as needed.

I excuse myself from one of the new kids and walk over to Pollux at the door. His eyes are downcast as he looks at the screen.

"Hey, Pollux," I say. "What's up, man?"

He pulls one of the earbuds out of his ear and holds it out to me. I take it and kneel down so I'm at his height before pressing it to my ear. As per usual, he's listening to Demi Lovato. It her newest song and his head bobs as she sings so I bob my head with him. Once the song ends, he shuts off the music and takes his earbuds back before walking toward his seat. He sits in the same one he used to sit in, the empty seat next to him saved indefinitely for Castor.

Life continues on at my hectic speed that reminds me of when I was in high school and my mother had me doing every extracurricular activity I could. I enjoy the pace. It gives me less time to wallow in my own pity. I'm not sure if it helps me move on, per say, but it helps me forget.

* * *

The November chill sets in just as my workload hits a lull before the holiday. It's also around that time that I start to wonder what exactly I'm going to do over winter break. I can't go home. It's not an option. In the few texts Rye and I have sent to each other in the past three months, he hasn't offered up his place either. I don't want to ask Katniss. A few days is one thing, but three weeks is a long time and I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable. I have to figure it out soon though because the residence halls close for winter break.

I suppose I should take it one holiday at a time and the first up is Thanksgiving.

The thing about Thanksgiving is that it's always right around the time Katniss has to have her yearly checks with Dr. Heavensbee. So for the past few years, we've been nervous wrecks. The day that Katniss was officially declared cancer free was November twenty-sixth, so her appointments are supposed to be somewhere around there. This year, it's two days before Thanksgiving Day, but because of exams and class assignments, Katniss really can't take a day off before the holiday, so she's scheduled to go in the Monday after.

Katniss says she likes it that way – says it gives her a last Thanksgiving without tears if her results come back bad. I don't like thinking about that and quickly reroute the conversation whenever she brings it up. I know she's nervous, but hearing her concerns just makes me more and more scared. If Katniss's tests come back with evidence of cancer, there's not much Dr. Heavensbee can do but make her comfortable. She's maxed out her options with the exception of experimental trials.

As much as I try to forget, it's hard not to think about and every time Katniss so much as coughs my body tenses.

However, when I wake up in Haymitch's guest room Thanksgiving morning, I'm surprised at the cheer filling the house. When I stumble downstairs to see how Haymitch is making so much noise, I realize he's not alone. His neighbor – and all but surrogate mother – Sae is in the kitchen with Mrs. Hawthorne. Prim and Posy are watching the Macy's Parade on the television while Vick and Rory play a card game on the floor. Haymitch and Mr. Hawthorne are talking in the parlor.

I feel Katniss wrap her arms around my waist and turn to see she has come down the stairs behind me, still dressed in her pajamas. "It's our first Thanksgiving together," she says.

I've never had a Thanksgiving without my family, but I have to say that this seems like a much livelier atmosphere than any we had in the past. My mother always made us dress in our Sunday best, but everyone here is dressed casually. But, most importantly, everyone's smiling.

"Everyone grab your shoes!" Mr. Hawthorne says and all the kids go running.

I look to Katniss and she smirks. "Welcome to our traditions."

Every year while Hazelle and Sae cook, Haymitch and Storm take the kids out of the house. There's a Thanksgiving Day showdown between the two high school football teams in the city. We root for the Cougars, since that's Rory's school. Almost as soon as we walk through the gates Rory and Prim disappear to sit with some of Rory's school friends. Vick vanishes soon too and before long it's down to five.

Posy situates herself in the bleachers between Katniss and me. She's almost ten now, a far cry from the preschooler I met when I was sixteen. She's a spunky kid, yipping and hollering at the players and calls. At one particularly bad call, she sits back down and pouts, resting her chin in her hands and leaning on her knees, muttering about it. Katniss and I share a look over her before Katniss starts talking to her in order to sway her mind away from it.

Katniss is great with kids. The way she talks to Posy makes my stomach lurch in a pleasant way. I don't know if Katniss is still against having kids, but she'd make a wonderful mother.

The Cougars end up winning and once we wrangle all the kids up, we make our way back to the house. Sae is just laying everything out on the table when we get back, so we take our shoes off and sit around the table. I sit between Prim and Katniss on one side of the dining table that's been extended to fit everyone. Once the turkey is on the table, Sae asks us who wants to say grace.

Rory and Vick both stand up with grins on their faces, but their father gives them a look. "If it's like last year, then sit your butts down in those chairs," he says.

"What did they do last year?" I ask, leaning over to whisper it to Katniss as they sit.

She giggles and whispers back, "Rub a dub, thanks for the grub, yay Jesus."

Beside Katniss, Posy raises her hand. "Can I say it?" she asks, looking toward her mother.

"That would be lovely," Sae says. Hazelle nods. "Go ahead, Posy."

Posy stands on her chair and reaches her hands on either side to take Katniss's in her right and her father's in her left. Around the table, everyone else joins hands and bows their heads. We always said grace before dinner and usually went around the table to say something we were thankful for back home, so I'm eager to see what they do here. It seems much more formal than anything my family ever did.

"Dear God," Posy starts. "Thank you for the food that You've given to us. Thanksgiving is a time to remind us of all we have to be thankful for and we have so much to be thankful for this year."

I expected her speech to end there, as our grace before dinner was typically short, but instead she starts to circle the table, talking about good things that have happened to them. She starts with her father, adds herself, and then goes around the table clockwise from her father going to her mother, then Vick, Rory, Sae, and Haymitch. As she draws nearer and nearer to where I'm sitting, I wonder what she could possibly say about me.

"We thank You for Prim's run and how You allowed it to be all she expected and more. And we want to thank You for having Peeta join our table this year. He is a very special part of our family and we pray that You'll allow him to be with us more often."

I crack an eye open and see that everyone is still in position, heads bowed, listening to Posy. There's no one rolling any eyes and I don't think she's saying it just to say it. I think Posy genuinely means what she's saying. I haven't felt wanted by my family in a while, but here is a ten-year-old trying to make me feel included.

Posy keeps going despite my inner thoughts.

"We thank You for Katniss's continued good health and pray that You stay with her on Monday when she goes in for her check up. Today we also remember those who are gone and are thankful that they are safe with You. We pray for Gale, Mr. and Mrs. Everdeen, and Miss Maysilee and hope that they are enjoying Your love and that they know that people down here miss them. Thank you, God. Amen."

"Amen," is chorused around the table.

Katniss leans over once we open our eyes and let go of our hands to nudge Posy's shoulder. "That was beautiful, Pose," she says.

"Thanks, Katniss." The little girl is smiling so widely.

We begin to pass food around and before long everyone is eating and chatting. There is never any silence and at some points, there are three or four different conversations going on. We're almost done when Sae asks Prim about her plans to visit colleges in the spring.

Prim turns to Haymitch as she talks, probably to make sure she's getting her itinerary right. "We're heading up north in February to visit a couple in Boston and then a couple in Pennsylvania. In April we're going to Virginia and North Carolina, right?"

"Why are you going to Boston in February?" Rory asks with a smirk. "Do you want to get snowed in?"

"Why are you going to Boston anyway," Katniss asks, leaning a little so she can see Prim on the other side of me. "Are you really considering places that far away?"

Prim looks down at her plate and pushes a bit of food around. Haymitch gives Katniss a look. "Your sister can look at any school she wants."

"I'm just saying that it's far away."

Haymitch's face clearly shows that he's not dealing with Katniss right now. So, instead of indulge her, he turns to Rory and ignores her instead. "You still looking at State?"

Katniss picks at her food for a bit, biding her time until she can leave. Hazelle starts clearing the table and Katniss goes with her, Posy following dutifully behind. Prim sighs and puts her head in her hands. I nudge her shoulder.

"She'll come around," I say. "I think she was just a little surprised."

"I know," Prim mutters. "I probably should have told her, but she didn't want to hear anything about me going to college. She still thinks I'm a little kid."

Katniss is always going to think of Prim as her little sister, but Prim's not a little girl anymore. She's growing up before everyone's eyes into a young lady. And, as much as Katniss wants to stay here with nothing around her changing, something tells me that once Prim graduates high school she is going to want to see the world.

"She'll come around," I repeat.

And she does, much later that night, but she doesn't exactly apologize. She says she's sorry, but she tacks on something along the lines of 'visiting doesn't mean you'll like it' to the end, which makes Prim upset. I'm not in the room when it goes down, but I run into Prim as she comes up the stairs and hear about it second hand.

Katniss is in the dining room working on something for one of her classes when I come down the stairs. Prim, who's heading to a friends' house before they go Black Friday shopping, slams the front door behind her loud enough to wake Haymitch, who went up to bed barely an hour after the Hawthornes and Sae left.

"You okay?" I ask.

Katniss doesn't even look up. "Why wouldn't I be?"

I shrug and lean against the doorframe, sticking my hands in my pocket. "Your sister's pretty upset."

She stops typing and looks up at me from over her computer screen. "Why does she have to go so far away?"

"She may not," I say. "She's just looking right now. But even if she does go visit and likes it and then she applies and gets in and decides to go, that doesn't mean that she's not going to come back eventually. But don't burn her thinking it's going to make her stay because it won't."

"How do you know?"

I walk toward her and take the open seat next to her. "You can't keep her in a bubble, Katniss. Prim's her own person."

Katniss sighs and bites her lip. "I guess I was kind of a jerk." She turns to me and I must be giving her an odd look because she throws her hands up. "I've told you before, I'm not a nice person."

"Yeah, but you're my big meanie," I say, wrapping my arm around her to pull her into me. I shut her laptop. "Come on, stop doing homework. It's Thanksgiving."

"Says the boy who spends most of his free time in the library."

I stand up. "Exactly, if I can take a day off, you can too." I lead her backwards toward the television room as I talk. "And if I have to bring you and Posy to the movies tomorrow and barrel through crowds of people who want to round out their weekend by watching a bunch of teenagers killing each other on the big screen, I need to watch something happy tonight."

"It's not kids this movie, it's adults."

I roll my eyes. "Well, tonight we're watching something hopeful. You can pick _The Lorax_, or_ The Grinch_ might actually be on again if you want to watch that."

Katniss sticks in the non-cartoon _Peter Pan_ instead.

* * *

It turns out that we had nothing to worry about. Katniss's test results come back just as we'd hoped. There is no evidence of cancer. Her heart and lungs are stronger than they've ever been. Her thyroid is still whacked, but we knew that, and she still has restrictions on what she can eat due to the damage her treatments caused to her digestive tract. But, overall, the results are very positive. She's more than halfway to five years.

Then again, Katniss relapsed in the second half last time, so we know we're not in the clear. And I guess technically no one is ever 'in the clear' but it's a good sign and Dr. Heavensbee is very optimistic. If he is, after treating Katniss for pretty much three fourths of her life, then I can optimistic too.

Now that Thanksgiving is over and Katniss is officially healthy, the next pressing matter can make its way to the forefront of my mind. I still need to find a place to live for the three weeks of winter break unless I decide to camp out in my truck. I don't ask Katniss. I know that Haymitch isn't too keen on Katniss' boyfriend spending extended amounts of time under his roof. I know I wouldn't if it was my kid. So, instead I start asking around to see if anyone who has an off campus place is looking to rent it out while they're home.

I don't know how she does it, but Katniss ends up finding out about my apartment search and insists I come live with them. And, when I arrive after Katniss takes her last final, Haymitch actually just shakes my hand and tells me that I'm always welcome, in his gruff and intimidating kind of way. I suppose I've proved that I'm enough of a gentleman not to try anything under his nose.

Their house is always very relaxing. It's laidback without too many strict guidelines like my mother had. _Take off your shoes at the door, Peeta. Don't mess up the pillows on the couch. If you close the blinds, make sure to open them, you don't want the neighbors to think we have anything to hide._ I still take off my shoes at the door, but there's no issue with messing with the pillows. In fact, Haymitch likes to use pillows to tease the girls, gently hitting them or throwing one at them, and they retaliate. Although it's clear who the boss of the house is, and as much as Katniss thinks it's her it's not, they still have fun.

One day it hits me. This cold feeling. It seeps into my bones and I can't even will myself to get out of bed. It doesn't make all that much sense to me. The day before I had laughed with Prim, joked with Haymitch, just been myself. But, as I lay in the guest bed, my mind floats to my family, who I haven't talked to since Rye texted me in November, and I just can't get up. I don't even make any conscious thoughts. I just feel bad.

Katniss comes in and curls up behind me, wrapping her arms around me, pressing her face between my shoulder blades. She starts to talk. I can feel her lips moving against me, the soft vibrations of her voice bouncing off my bare skin. It takes me a while to realize that she's singing.

I've never heard her sing before, but her voice is so warm and familiar that I wonder if maybe she's sang to me when I was sleeping. I've heard her hum, but never sing, and it's like nothing I've ever heard. I bet if I looked outside the birds would be sitting on the sill not singing in order to hear her. Prim says that Katniss has the most beautiful voice in the world when she uses it and now that I've heard it I have to agree.

And, despite the darkness, I fall in love with her all over again.

It's girl I fall for, not the voice, although it is beautiful. The girl who gave up singing long ago but will resurrect it for me.

I don't know how long we end up staying in the guest room, Katniss singing and me listening. It could be minutes, hours, or days, and I wouldn't know the difference. When we do sit up to face the world again, I still feel a pit in the bottom of my stomach, the everlasting coldness that I don't know will ever truly go away.

"Talk to me," Katniss says, resting her head on my shoulder.

I do. I tell Katniss about what I'm feeling. I tell her that sometimes I think I'm not good enough. I tell her that sometimes I wonder how I ended up being such a mess. She listens to every word, stroking the back of my hand with her thumb. I tell her that it's comforting that she's here with me.

Like I said, I'm not sure how long we stay there. All I know is that I don't want to leave.

* * *

Christmas and New Years pass quickly and before long Prim is back at school and its just three of us in the house. Haymitch spends most of the day in his office working, while Katniss and I adventure in baking (lets just say, when Katniss and I get married, she is never going into the kitchen alone), people watching at the mall, and picking Prim up from her various afterschool activities. Sometimes she'll come with me to Mags' and sit at the counter talking to the elderly woman who runs the diner. And some days we just sit in the living room or the kitchen and talk.

Which is what we're doing today.

Katniss is lying on the couch, her feet in my lap so I can massage them. It's one of the few things I can do to physically help her deal with her health problems. Finnick says a good massage every now and then is good for the nerves in her feet. I like being able to do something for her. It makes me feel useful.

She's watching the last few minutes of some crazy reality show where the people have weird addictions, like carrying around urns or eating cheesy potatoes for every meal. Katniss is enthralled so I don't say anything, but if I never have to see another cheesy potato again it'll be too soon.

I put most of my focus on Katniss's feet so I don't have to watch.

The hour changes and I look up when I don't hear the theme song for the previous show start up. Instead, it's one of those wedding dress shows. I expect Katniss to start flipping channels again in attempts of finding the Cake Boss, who has evaded her all morning and most of yesterday, but she doesn't. She just flips on her side and makes herself comfortable as the blonde owner of the shop starts telling us about why she hates foxes in henhouses – which I don't see has anything to do with wedding dresses until I realize by fox, she means groom.

I side eye Katniss for a minute. We've been doing well talking to each other about things that are affecting us, but the future is still a topic that I'd been kind of waiting on her to initiate a conversation about. She hasn't. I guess I don't mind if she doesn't want to get married, I just always kind of assumed I would marry someone and have kids, but I need to know where we stand. So, I think of a decent segue into that kind of conversation and see if she picks up on it.

The groom, being interviewed by the cameraman, insists that it's his wedding too and that he should have a say in the dress. Here's my chance. "I wouldn't want to see your dress," I say, trying to make it sound casual. "At least, not until the doors open and you're walking toward me down the aisle."

Katniss doesn't say anything. In another part of the store, a bride is fretting about her dress not fitting because she gained a few pounds. Now I feel like an idiot.

"I mean, I don't care if we get married or not," I backtrack. "I'll be your boyfriend for the rest of my life, I just...never mind. Forget I said anything."

Katniss sighs and rolls over so she's on her back and can look at me. I keep my eyes focused on the television where they're onto another bride who has her groom's mother in the shop with her. That seems like a recipe for disaster to me, thinking about what my mother would do to Ka–

"Do you want to get married?"

I turn away from the TV. Katniss's face is blank. I can't read what she's thinking at all. I opened up this can of worms; I might as well throw everything out there. This is what we're supposed to do with each other.

"I'd love to marry you," I tell her, turning my head down to her feet. "I want the whole shebang with you – go house hunting, see you in your wedding dress, have kids, a dog, the white picket fence. But, I know that scares you and I'm not going to force any of it on you. You're the only person I'd ever marry, so if you don't want to, we'll just live in sin for the rest of our lives."

Katniss snorts at the last bit, but I'm being a hundred percent serious. "I only want that with you," I add, trying to hammer in my point.

When I look up, Katniss is biting her bottom lip. "Do you think about that a lot?"

"Kind of. I mean, I've thought about it before," I tell her. "I've pictured it in my head."

She adjusts on the couch to a sitting position. "What do you see?"

I shrug. "I don't really see anything different about us exactly. I guess I just see us, happy, you know?" I smile, almost imagining it myself while I tell her. "We're chasing a dog that's covered in mud, or a little girl's jumping up and down at the counter because she's excited to lick the bowl while we're making a cake. I guess, I just see us growing old together and that's all I really want."

Once I put away the little girl with the two blonde braids and clear gray eyes and chocolate covering her face, as well as the golden retriever whose coat is covered in mud, I turn back to Katniss. She has tears in her eyes.

"Why are you crying?" I ask.

"Because the way you see things is so beautiful." She takes a breath. "But I don't know if I can give you what you want."

I hold out my arms and she falls into them. "All I need is you," I tell her. "Everything else is bonus."

"Promise?" she asks, not looking up at me. It reminds me of the night when I asked her if she would still love me despite what I was going to tell her. She looks just as lost and afraid as I had felt.

"Promise."

* * *

The last day of our vacation is the same day that Haymitch has to meet with the hospital board and the other members of the It Can Be Good Again Foundation for their monthly meeting. I have a shift at Mags' until noon, but when I get back Haymitch has just left and Katniss is sitting on the steps, staring at the door, waiting for me to walk through.

It's the first time that we've actually been alone together in the house. Once I kick my boots off, she takes my hand and leads me up the stairs. We have a few hours before Haymitch's meeting finishes and he grabs Prim on his way out of PCH. The timing of his meeting and my shift was impeccable and I'm just as eager as Katniss for this. Once we get to the top stair, she pulls me down to kiss me and by the time we make it to her room her legs are wrapped around my waist.

We barely breathe, trying to keep our lips together as long as possible. We keep kissing as Katniss slides back down my body, her feet landing on the ground with a small smack. She goes almost immediately for the buttons of my white work shirt. My mind goes blank, my shirt comes off, and we fall into Katniss's bed. It's been a while since we've been able to kiss like this and it seems like both of our minds allow our bodies to take over. We attack each other – there is no other way of putting it.

Eventually the raging lust cools down when we're both breathing heavy. As Katniss catches her breath so she doesn't suffer any oxygen deprivation, I take her hand and kiss the scars on her palms from the graft-versus-host. I make eye contact with her as I lift up her shirt to kiss the scars from the radiation and all up her stomach.

"Peeta?"

I look up as see complete terror in her eyes. "Do you want me to stop?"

She shakes her head and opens her mouth to say something, but Katniss has always done better with her actions than she has her words, so instead she reaches down and yanks her shirt over her head.

"Ugly, right?"

To be honest, I hadn't even looked at her scar and when I do, I'm shocked at how small it is. I was expecting something the size of her fist the way she talks about it, and it's not what I expected at all. She has one dark puckered oval right under her collarbone that's about the size of a quarter. Then there's a line incision just under it and another puckered mark an inch or so down and right. "You're beautiful, Katniss." I lean down and kiss the skin that's brand new to me.

"Really?"

"Katniss, everyone has scars," I say. "If I had a magic eraser, would I erase your scars? No. I fell head over heels in love with a fighter and a survivor. I wish I could make you more confident about them but the only way I'd erase them would be if it meant erasing cancer out of your life entirely, no diagnosis, not treatment, nothing."

Katniss stares at me and I wonder if what I said just sunk in with her at all, or if it even made sense to her. We've been together for two and a half years and I'm just now seeing them.

"Do you think this would've happened anyway?" she asks. I frown, not quite understanding, and she clarifies. "Me and you. Like, if I never got sick and we both grew up normal, there was no cluster, would we still be us?"

Miner Falls would have been a completely different place from the town I grew up in if there had been no cluster. Maybe it would have been the cheerful town my father always recalled with such fondness if kids didn't start dying and the mine didn't close and the people didn't move away. And, when I think about Katniss with her hair in braids skipping down Main Street with Prim on their way through the shops as if there's not a problem in the world it makes my heart hurt because I know that's the exact opposite of what Katniss had and exactly what I wish she remembered when she looked back on her childhood. Maybe, if the doctors at Boone Memorial had called with results of anemia when we were five, Katniss would have became friends with Delly and Madge, and the three little girls would grow up giggling and feeding the cat that hid under the bakery porch. Maybe Katniss and I would've been high school sweethearts instead of star-crossed lovers. Or maybe Katniss and I would have been friends that didn't want to ruin anything between us and fall back on each other once we'd already been in failed marriages. There are so many possibilities as to how we could've met and fallen in love.

But this is the fate we were given.

"I think," I say, "that we would be different people, but we would've found each other eventually. Because I believe in soulmates and all that other corny stuff you love _so_ much."

Katniss smirks at my sarcasm and then turns her head to look at the clock on her bedside table. When she looks at me, her eyes are alight.

"We still have some time before Haymitch and Prim come home."

She doesn't have to say it twice.

* * *

_Chapter Facts (author's note below)_

_"I didn't realize until now how starved I've been for human closeness" is a direct quote from _The Hunger Games

_The Pace for Progress 5K was held on Saturday, September 7, 2013._

_Main Kwong is a chinese place in Charleston, WV._

_Prim's ringtone on Katniss's phone is the second verse of "Cups (When I'm Gone)" (radio version) by Anna Kendrick_

_Boone Memorial Hospital was mentioned in Part III. It's in Madison, WV, about a twenty-minute drive from where I'm imagining Miner Falls to be located._

_The show Peeta, Katniss, and Haymitch watch while avoiding Parents Weekend is_ House Hunters_ on HGTV. There's also a reference to _House Hunters International_._

_The Thanksgiving football game is based off a tradition in my hometown and something my family has gone to for generations. The Cougars are an actual mascot for one of the two high schools in Charleston, the Capital High Cougars._

_"Rub a dub, thanks for the grub, yay Jesus," is a grace that used to be said at the summer camp I went to as a kid. It's also used with slightly different wording in an episode of _Family Guy_._

_The movie that Peeta says he is taking Katniss and Posy to is _Catching Fire_. Posy might be kind of young, but I figure she's a mature little girl. She's the same age as one of my cousins, who is dying for November to come, so I figured why not. The movie Katniss and Peeta watch on Thanksgiving, _Peter Pan_ (2003), was chosen because it stars Jeremy Sumpter as Peter, who is my headcanon Peeta for this fic._

_The shows on TLC that Katniss is watching are _My Strange Addiction_ and _Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta

* * *

_Thank you all for the support. I'm so sorry that this chapter is so late coming. There were some personal issues going on in my life (they're detailed in a post on my tumblr if you would like to read about it) and I just couldn't. However, I'm determined to finish this before I head back to school. I estimate one more chapter and then an epilogue. The new cover image was made by the wonderful Ro Nordmann. And, as always, all mistakes are mine._

_Again, I'm so sorry for the long wait. I hope it was worth it. Let me know what you think!_


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